The apricot harvest is going full steam ahead in Armenia's Armavir Marz.

But the bumper crop predicted at the start of the year hasn't materialized. Large scale purchasers of the fruit also aren't pleased that the frequent hailstorms have damaged the appearance of the apricots, making them less desirable in terms of saleability.

Today, a kilo of apricots can be purchased in the marketplace for between 300-500 AMD. The damaged fruit is much cheaper; 80-100 AMD.

Village growers either have to accept the depressed prices offered by the fruit canners and processors or else they must pit the fruit to make dried apricot paste and other items.

The apricot harvest in the village of Lenough started two days ago.

Mayor Gegham Ghazaryan told Hetq that most local residents derive a bulk of their revenues from apricots but that this year's hail storms have thrown their financial budgets out of whack.

The village plans to harvest about 100 tons of apricots. The number would have been thrice as much without the damaging hail.

Mayor Ghazaryan is concerned that many small farmers will not be able to pay back the loans they are straddled with.

"The entire village faces a debt crisis due to the agricultural loans people have received from the banks. The community is slowly dying out."

The apricot harvest is already over in the Armavir village of Dasht. There wasn't much to harvest.

Constant rains wreaked havoc on the blossoming fruit trees early in the season. Two years ago 120 tons of apricots were harvested. This year's crop was only 10 tons.

Dasht Mayor Hrant Petrosyan said that growers have had no trouble selling the fruit to resellers at 200-350 AMD per kilo.

The Armavir Regional Administration told Hetq that they had predicted an apricot crop of some 25,000 tons but that due to the inclement weather it would be several times less.

Officials at the Department of Agriculture said they were actively working in hard hot communities so that growers could at least sell their fruit at 70-100 AMD to companies like Artfood, Byurak and Yevroterm.

The Armavir Administration confesses that their earlier predictions for the grape and peach crop will also be much more than actually harvested.