40% OF TENDERS ANNOUNCED FOR RENDERING SERVICES DIDN’T TAKE PLACE IN
FIRST HALF-YEAR

YEREVAN, August 4 (Noyan Tapan). In 7 months of 2004 purchases
amounting to more than 20b drams (about $38.5m) were made for RA state
government bodies, which exceeded the index of purchases made in 2003
by about 4b drams. Gagik Khachatrian, the Head of the Agency of State
Purchases, said at the August 4 press conference that the growth of
the volumes of purchases is conditioned by allocation of savings of
2003 state budget amounting to 12b drams for the sphere of
construction. The realization of 8.5b drams from this sum will be
organized by means of the Agency of State Purchases. It was mentioned
that already 5.6b drams were realized through the tenders organized
only in July. According to G.Khachatrian, the market of services
hasn’t been formed in Armenia yet. In connection with this it was
mentioned that 40% of the tenders announced for rendering of services
didn’t take place in 6 month of this year. The head of the Agency also
mentioned that the growth of exchange rate of dram in relation to the
US dollar gave an opportunity of saving 30m drams from the resources
of RA Ministry of Health. G.Khachatrian reported that a new system of
setting up of tender prices is being prepared at present. According to
this, in particular, it’s envisaged to set up season prices for
food-stuffs and a number of goods, proceeding from which the changes
of market prices will ba taken into consideration in the term
contracts. The variations of market prices will be periodically
studied for this purpose and the contractual prices will be
resonsidered on the basis of them.