YEREVAN. – There are no kickbacks at the Ministry of Health of Armenia, Health Minister Derenik Dumanyan told news reporters Friday at the National Assembly. 

To the remark that someone has spoken about kickbacks at the ministry, Dumanyan responded:

“I speak on behalf of the Ministry of Health, and I bear responsibility for my words.”

The minister noted that the legal income in Armenia’s health sector increased three times in the last year and this, in his view, means that the shadow economy in the sector has reduced.

“[But] I don’t think that anyone, including me, believes that we would be able to completely neutralize the shadow in the health sector. But we are doing everything so that the entire sector may be without shadow economy,” he stressed.     

According to Derenik Dumanyan, to effectively fight against the shadow, it is first necessary to know where and how it is created.