YEREVAN, February 21. /ARKA/. The government of Armenia has approved today the launch of a pilot project designed to revise the procurement scheme for the Armenian armed forces.

"Until now the process of food supply for the armed forces was organized by the ministry of defense. At various stages of the process we used to face problems, and the quality of food supplied to the armed forces often caused dissatisfaction,” said Deputy Defense Minister Makar Ghambaryan.

According to him, after studying the experience of various countries and assessing the existing risks, it was decided that the most effective way is to hand this process to private companies.

He said a relating draft law provides for minimum requirements for soldier canteens and adjacent cooking zones, renovation and replacement of technical equipment, appliances and utensils, modern heating, air-conditioning and fire-fighting equipment.

The deputy minister said there is a need to increase the number of jobs and raise also the wages of the involved personnel. In his words, the entire process will be tightly supervised. 

In turn, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said the task is to increase the quality of the supplied products without additional spending. He also said that the pilot project is supposed to reveal the existing problems and suggest ways to eliminate them.-0-.