Armenian entrepreneurs unwilling to stay in market economy oases

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia lacks markets economy and transparency fundamentals, RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan said at CIS Intergovernmental Antimonopoly Policy Council sitting in Yerevan. The premier stated that, unfortunately, Armenia's ranking in annual global competitiveness report remains unchanged (97th position among 183 countries in 2009). "RA antimonopoly policy ranking suffered significant downfall," he said.



According to Sargsyan, current sitting aims at developing new approaches to increase antimonopoly policy effectiveness. RA government acted to provide fair competition by openly publishing major taxpayers' reports so as the public is informed of the amount of taxes paid and activities for which taxes are exacted. ''Still, this was not enough, so we launched a new legislative initiative stipulating for mandatory external audit and its obligatory publication for major taxpayers,'' he stated.



Among governmental actions towards competitiveness regulation, risk assessment concept was adopted. Steps were undertaken to develop securities market, as, in reality, there are no functioning joint stock companies in RA; operating companies aren't ready to present activity reports to the public view. "We implemented a number of mitigating mechanisms in this sphere to allow enterprises' preparation for entering the stock market (IPO process, activity audit preparation). We hope the enterprises will be able to use market economy oases offered for their benefit,'' the Premier concluded.