Prime Minister of Armenia: We should fundamentally reform the system of
tax administration within 2 years

2009-03-13 19:01:00

ArmInfo. Armenian authorities were ready to the processes in the
domestic market that took place on March 3, Armenian Prime Minister
Tigran Sargsyan said at a meeting with a group of journalists Friday.

To recall, on March 3 Armenian dram devaluated by 20%, which resulted
in price hike in the consumer market, in particular the prices of oil,
petrol, sugar and flour hiked. Tigran Sargsyan said such developments
arouse certain mess among citizens. `It is characteristic not only to
Armenia. In all the countries even in developed one, essential
commodities may disappear from the shops within an hour. All this is
expectation of negative consequences’, the premier said. He underlined
that on March 3 relevant agencies were charged to minimize the panic
buying. As a result, within 2-3 days the situation in the consumer
market has been balanced. This panic in the financial market was
overcome even earlier. To prevent similar situations in future it is
time to create an anti-monopoly atmosphere, the premier said. `The
best way to settle the given problem is competitive atmosphere in the
country. To settle this task the government is going to take certain
measure to reform the system of tax administration, to create equal
conditions for management, fully execute laws. Within 2 years the
system of tax administration will be fundamentally changed, which will
allow preventing the problems that originated on March 3. There are
also some subjective reasons for monopolization of certain economic
sectors due to the limited domestic market, underdeveloped
communications including the only road linking Armenia with outside
world via Georgia. There are problems in Georgia with delivery of
cargoes’, the premier said. `Together with our Georgian partners we
have repeatedly raised this issue. It is much cheaper and easier for
Armenian carriers to deliver cargoes to Georgian ports than to further
deliver them from these ports to Armenia. This hinders development of
SMEs in Armenia. This problems can be settle by big business that has
a relative advantage in the domestic market often abusing its
position’, the premier said. He highlighted the importance of
increasing the role of the State Commission for Protection of Economic
Competition in the sphere as stipulated by the governmental
anti-crisis program. `We are ready to discuss any proposal that will
give more powers to the commission to fight this evil’, T. Sargsyan.