The trucks laden with agricultural produce were intercepted in various Russian cities three weeks ago for still unknown reasons. Spayka dispatched lawyers to Russia to negotiate with relevant authorities there. According to a top company executive, Karen Baghdasarian, they have still not received a clear explanation for the unprecedented punitive measure that has disrupted the company’s operations essential for the Armenian agricultural sector.
“The wholesale purchases [of fruit and vegetables from Armenian farmers] will probably continue until the end of the month,” Baghdasarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “If the situation does not change and the warehouses are already full by that time, we will be forced to stop them.”
Farmers in Armenia’s fruit-growing Ararat province heavily reliant on Spayka are already worried about such a prospect. They say that Spayka pays them more for their produce than any other wholesale buyer in the country. One of them, Armen Andreasian, has sold it apricots grown by him for the last three years.
“The [local food-processing] plant pays 180 drams (47 U.S. cents) per kilogram, while Spayka took them for 220 drams,” explained Andreasian. “There is quite a difference.”
“We produce and they take it at a good price,” said another farmer who grows expensive grapes meant for individual consumption. “To put it bluntly, our bread and water depend on them.”
Spayka is Armenia’s leading producer and exporter of agricultural products that are not only purchased from farmers across the country but also grown at its own greenhouses. It currently employs about 2,500 people.
The company claims to account for roughly two-thirds of Armenian fruit and vegetable exports which totaled, according to government data, over $140 million in the first half of this year. Russia absorbs the bulk of those exports.
In recent years, Moscow has occasionally and briefly banned some of them on sanitary grounds construed by Armenian commentators as Russian retaliation against the Armenian government’s continuing drift to the West. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk renewed earlier this month his warnings about severe economic consequences of Yerevan’s declared desire to eventually join the European Union.
The Spayka trucks were reportedly intercepted two weeks after the company’s founder and owner, Davit Ghazarian, hosted the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, Kristina Kvien, at the company’s offices and showed her around its greenhouses outside Yerevan. In an August 14 statement, Spayka said they “exchanged ideas on ways to deepen U.S.-Armenia economic ties.”
Russian government agencies, including the Rosselkhoznadzor agricultural watchdog, have not yet made any public statements on the subsequent arrest of the trucks. The Armenian government has not commented on it either.