STATE CUSTOMS COMMITTEE REGULARLY BREAKS LAW, RA NATIONAL ASSEMBLY DEPUTY STATES
Noyan Tapan
Apr 06 2006
YEREVAN, APRIL 6, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA State Customs Committee (SCC)
regularly breaks the law, and its management should be held accountable
for it. Tatul Manaserian, deputy of the RA National Assembly, member of
the Justice faction, stated this at the April 6 press conference. In
his words, with the connivance of the committee, in many cases only
half of some imported goods’ customs value is charged, while in some
cases the customs duty is not charged at all. As a result, according
to the deputy, only with respect to one commodity – coffee, the
state budget incurs an annual loss of 10 mln dollars. T. Manaserian
said that the customs value “set” for the coffee imported by Royal
Armenia company is twice as much as that for the other 9 coffee
importing companies.
Using the information of the World Bank report, the deputy noted
that 46 drams from each 100 drams paid to the customs bodies is a
bribe. According to him, the real loss that the state budget incurs as
a result of the bad-faith competition makes up about 1.5% of GDP. He
pointed out that “55 mln dollars is stolen from the society every
year only in terms of gasoline.” He cited the official statistical
figures to show that the current gasoline and diesel fuel imports
indices are half as much as they were in 1998-1999. At the same time,
according to the official data, the number of cars has increased more
than twofold. Therefore, T. Manaserian said, fuel imports have not
declined, and in reality the matter concerns fuel smuggling. The deputy
noted that so far there have been responses to the deputy inquiry to
the SCC in connection with the problem of Royal Armenia company.