Cement was available in only two of several construction materials stores in Yerevan visited by an RFE/RL correspondent on Wednesday. One of them receives it from the country’s sole major cement plant located in the southern town of Ararat. The supplies partly resumed on Tuesday after being suspended over two weeks ago.
The Ararat plant belongs to Gagik Tsarukian, a businessman and opposition leader arrested in the wake of the June 7 parliamentary elections. The Armenian government controversially seized it in July as part of a crackdown on Tsarukian and his numerous businesses.
Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan said earlier this month that the plant’ output has increased since the seizure denounced by Tsarukian’s lawyers as illegal. Papoyan spoke of disruptions in the cement supply chain but did not elaborate.
The owner of another Yerevan store imports cement from Iran. In his words, those shipments have become problematic in recent weeks, with hundreds of cement trucks currently stuck at Iran’s sole border crossing with Armenia.
Some local builders, who did not want to speak on camera, likewise blamed the shortage on Iranian suppliers. They told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that cement produced in Armenia is primarily supplied to large developers and government contractors.
Armenia - Cement bags at a construction materials store in Yerevan, September 30, 2026.
In what appears to be a related development, Armenia’s ambassador to Iran met with Iranian Vice President Hamid Pourmohammadi at the weekend to discuss what his mission described as “obstacles” to cargo shipments between the two countries and “ways to resolve them.” No details of the discussion were reported.
U.S.-Israeli air strikes hit at least one Iranian cement plants earlier this year. They also caused disruptions in Iran’s production of natural gas heavily used by such plants.
Armenia’s imports of Iranian cement have increased significantly in recent years amid a construction boom in the South Caucasus country. Iran accounted for more than 40 percent of 1.7 million tons of the essential construction material used by the Armenian construction sector last year.
The shortages are thus putting the sector’s continued expansion at risk. Hovannes, a builder from Gyumri, claimed on Wednesday that construction in Armenia’s second largest city has all but ground to a halt because of them. He said his company has for days been unable to buy cement in Gyumri and other parts of the surrounding Shirak province.