As a result of inspections conducted over the last few months, the Control Service of the President of the Republic of Armenian has revealed numerous violations in the work of almost all the ministries and government agencies. Major violations were registered in the work of the RA Ministry of Nature Protection. At his press conference, Head of the Servide Hovhannes Hovsepyan pointed out violations in the royalty and income tax payments. “In the case of royalty the concessionaires did not pay about 1bn AMD to the state budget. As regards the income tax, they did not pay about 300m AMD,” Hovsepyan said. Mine concession licenses were issued with massive violations as well.

The licenses were issued to the economic entities that failed to fulfill their commitments before. Over 500m AMD were not paid to the state budget due to loopholes in Armenian laws. Some of the concessionaries failed to meet their investment commitments, which caused damage of several billion AMD to the state. The relevant authorized agencies levied 130m AMD instead of 247m AMD for mine exploitation licenses. License taxes totaling 600m AMD were not paid to the budget.

Hovsepyan reported a considerable decrease in the number of violations after some of the powers were transferred from the RA Ministry of Nature Protection to the RA Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources.

T.P.