Government to provide broader opportunities to business for participation in state procurement process

YEREVAN, APRIL 2, ARMENPRESS. In the context of ongoing reforms in the procurement process Armenia’s finance ministry has made certain changes in the sub-legislative level and submitted a draft to the government. In order to participate in the procurement system, qualification criteria will not be required from small and medium business for up to 10 million AMD procurement, instead of the previous 5 million drams, Sergey Shahnazaryan – head of the Procurement policy department at the finance ministry, told reporters.

“We have received stances from the business and NGOs for forming the draft and submitted it for the government’s discussion. But it hasn’t been discussed yet. It will regulate several issues”, he said.

Currently there are some restrictions for the companies that have loan obligations in terms of participation to the procurement process. Shahnazaryan said this will be removed. The finance ministry will also rule out overloading the participants in the procurement process with artificial demands. “In other words, we will not demand documents from the participants which we already have and can check and assess. And if there is a wish to find out whether the presented information is in accordance with the reality or not, we will clarify it through our respective state bodies”, he said.

While making up to 5 million AMD procurement the small and medium business was allowed to participate in these processes without meeting any qualification criteria. Shahnazaryan said that this 5 million AMD threshold will raise to 10 million AMD. The head of the department added that those were the visible problems over which the business had some complaints.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan