“We need to be more flexible to prevent others from targeting our strategic products,” Armen Grigorian, the secretary of the country’s Security Council, said during a conference in Yerevan.
“Let me give you a simple example,” he went on. “We could switch from wheat to rice. Wheat may be a strategic commodity. But at some point, we could switch to rice, change our habits and have rice as a strategic commodity.”
Such a diversification of imports would be in line with the Armenian government’s “comprehensive security concept,” added Grigorian.
The pro-Western official appeared to respond to Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, who rebuked him late last month for taking part in a pro-Ukrainian video conference on international food security held earlier in September.
“People interested in food security should first of all be interested in how this issue is addressed in their own country,” Zakharova told a news briefing. “Ninety percent of grain comes to Armenia from Russia. Perhaps you [Armenian officials] should contact Russia via video conference to discuss your food security? It would be fair and respectful.”
“Why act behind the backs of those who feed you and ensure your food security?” she said in remarks that underscored a deepening rift between the two longtime allies.
According to official statistics, wheat imports meet roughly 70 percent of Armenia’s domestic demand. Practically all of those imports, which totaled almost 344,000 tons last year, come from Russia.
PAKISTAN - Farmers harvest rice paddy at a field on the outskirts of Lahore on June 25, 2024.
Suren Parsian, a Yerevan-based economist, scoffed at Grigorian’s statement, saying that it is purely “political” and devoid of “any economic logic.” He argued, in particular, that no rice is grown in Armenia, meaning that the country would be fully dependent on its large-scale imports advocated by Grigorian.
“Our population consumes bread in large quantities, this is one of our national specificities which we can’t change,” Parsian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Secondly, in the case of Armenia, rice is more expensive than wheat, given that we import it from remote countries with which we have no free-trade agreements. By contrast, wheat imported from Russia is exempt from import duty and value-added tax.”
Amid its heightened tensions with Moscow, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government has pledged to “diversify” Armenia’s foreign and security policy and ease its heavy dependence on Russia for trade. Critics counter that that dependence has actually deepened during Pashinian’s six-year rule.
Russia accounted for over 35 percent of Armenia’s foreign trade last year, up from 26.7 percent in 2017, the year before Pashinian came to power. Russian-Armenian trade has skyrocketed since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the resulting Western sanctions imposed on Moscow.
Russia also remains Armenia principal supplier of natural gas. The Russian gas price for the South Caucasus country has long been set well below the international market-based levels.
So far Moscow has largely avoided using this strong economic leverage to try to stop Yerevan from reorienting itself towards the West. The chief of Pashinian’s staff, Arayik Harutiunian, evoked the possibility of a Russian trade embargo late last year. He claimed that Diaspora Armenians can offset it by buying more food and beverages manufactured in Armenia.