The company’s Armenian subsidiary, Veolia Djur, asked the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) in August this year to raise the price from 200 to 209 drams (52 U.S. cents) per cubic meter. It cited increased production costs resulting from higher-than-expected inflation in the country.
The PSRC granted the request while deciding to keep the water tariff unchanged for low-income households. They will continue to pay 180 drams per cubic meter in 2023.
The head of the regulatory body, Garegin Baghramian, stressed that other consumers will not be affected by the price hike, effective from January 2023, because of a full subsidy promised by the Armenian government last week.
“This means that the water bills will be based on the existing prices,” Baghramian told reporters. Still, he did not rule out another tariff rise in 2024.
The regular water price was already raised by 11 percent as recently as in January 2022. It had stood at 180 drams per cubic meter since the Veolia utility giant took over the national network in 2017 after signing a 15-year management contract with Armenia’s former government.
Veolia had managed the water and sewerage network of Yerevan from 2007-2016, phasing out Soviet-era water rationing in the vast majority of city neighborhoods.