ARMENIAN PREMIER REPRIMANDS AGRICULTURE MINISTER FOR MISMANAGEMENT

ARKA
March 5, 2010

YEREVAN, March 5. /ARKA/. Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan has
voiced a stern reprimand to Agriculture Minister Gerasim Alaverdyan
for improper fulfillment of his duties.

On Thursday, speaking at the cabinet’s meeting, he said that the
government has singled out agriculture as one of its top-priority
focuses in 2010.

Sargsyan said the government intended to ensure a five-percent growth
in this sector.

It means all the limited state budget funds earmarked for this purpose
must be utilized very effectively.

"Armenian Control Chamber scrutinized the purchasing process in the
agriculture ministry in 2008 and 2009 and found out grave faults,
which we had to correct. The minister must pay a special attention
to this problem," the premier said.

He said that vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease are bought at
a price twice higher than a real price.

The Control Chamber attracted the ministry’s attention to this fact,
but things haven’t been put right, and the situation even worsened
in 2010.

The PM-affiliated control service, after receiving this information
from the Control Chamber, carried out own scrutiny and found out
that Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, chief of the agriculture ministry’s
financial and economic accounting division, and Gevork Tovmasyan,
an official in change of purchases in 2010, have done nothing to
organize purchases properly.

"More than that – the tender conditions gave a chance to win the
tender only to one company. Calculations showed that there was room
for lowering prices at least by 50%. If the Control Chamber didn’t
interfere, we would sustain immense losses," Sargsyan said.

The prime minister instructed the agriculture minister to file a
motion to the Civil Service Council for launching an investigation
into the matter to dismiss the mentioned officials.