ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT PROPOSES NEW STANDARDS OF SME CLASSIFICATION
NOYAN TAPAN
APRIL 26, 2010
YEREVAN
YEREVAN, APRIL 26, NOYAN TAPAN. Armenia’s National Assembly on April
26 finished discussing (in the first reading) the bill envisaging
amendments to the RA Law on State Assistance to Small and Medium
Entrepreneurship. The bill was submitted at the previous four-day
session and will be voted on tomorrow.
The government said that the proposed amendments aim to ensure
comparability of the indices characterizing small and medium
enterprises and bring them into line with EU standards. The bill
revises and specifies the current standards of classifying SMEs
in Armenia, in particular it is proposed classifying them not by
the number of employees, as under the the current law, but by their
incomes in the previous year or by the balance sheet value of their
assets at the end of the previous year.
The bill proposes the following classification of SMEs: very small
and small commercial organizations are those where the average number
of employees on payroll is from 10 to 50 employees, the incomes from
their activity in the previous year did not exceed 100 million drams,
while the balance sheet value of their assets did not exceed 500
million drams at the end of the previous year. Medium enterprises
are commercial organizations and private entrepreneurs with up to
250 employees on payroll, whose incomes in the previous year did not
exceed 1.5 billion drams and the balance sheet value of their assets
did not exceed 1 billion drams at the end of the previous year.
According to the government, in case of adoption of new classification
standards, about 99% of operating enterprises to be considered as SMEs
will receive assistance under an annual program of state assistance –
as compared to 97% at present.