Chaired by the RA Minister of Finance Vardan Aramyan, a meeting with the representatives of NGOs was held in the RA Ministry of Finance. The Armenian CSO Anticorruption Coalition represented by the Armenian Lawyers’ Association Attended the meeting as well
During the meeting the activities carried out by the Ministry in 2017, as well as the actions planned in 2018, which are aimed at making procurement procedures more transparent and transparent were discussed. In particular, the three problems that arose during the enforcement of the procurement legislation, and for their solution the Government of the Republic of Armenia initiated the process of amendments in the Government decision N 526-N of 2017 “On the Procurement Process”.
It should be mentioned that two of the three proposed reforms were voiced by the Armenian CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition represented by the Armenian Lawyers’ Association during the meeting in “without ties format” with Mr. Karen Tamazyan, the Deputy Finance Minister and Mr. Sergey Shahnazaryan, the Head of Financial Management and Control Methodology Division of the RA Ministry of Finances. The mentioned meeting was organized in the scope of the “Evidence-based Advocacy for Reform” project, which is implemented by the Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE), Armenian Lawyers’ Association (ALA) and European Business Association (EBA) with financial support of the German International Cooperation (GIZ). The above mentioned proposals have been presented to the Government of Armenia in the “Favorable Business Environment: Challenges and Recommendations” report.
The recommendations relate to the solution of practical issues of submitting documents at tenders and the regulation of procurement commissions’ activities. Particularly, in the case of tenders with a value of up to 70 million it is foreseen to remove the requirement for the tender security. This issue is detailed in the journalistic investigation conducted by the Armenian Lawyers’ Association, which is available at https://bizprotect.am/am/news/show/17. The fact resulted in a loss of about 1.5 million AMD from the RA state budget. Consequently, these reforms will contribute to the development of small and medium businesses, non-discriminatory nature of tyheir organization, the growth of free competition and saving of the state budget.