“We all together must see to it that all the large Armenian enterprises provide their accounts to the public,” RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan stated at the RA Government’s sitting on April 8. He pointed out that a list of 285 enterprises recording an annual turnover of 1bn AMD has been published.

“We are accused of being unable to ensure proper control over large enterprises, and I agree with the criticism. If a large enterprise can evade taxes, it is a scourge for the state – it destroys the foundations of the state and hinders SMB development,” the Premier said.

He stated that the RA Ministry of Finance must publish the results of its surveys and show the comparative indices of the largest taxpayers for 2008 and 2009.

“We suspect that the tax burden has mainly fallen on small-to-medium businesses, not on the large enterprises. And we must expel the suspicions,” T. Sargsyan said. He pointed out that publicity is the best way of ensuring transparency.

“If we also set up commissions for ethics, which are supposed to supervise Parliament members and Ministers and prevent them from doing business, I think our society will have greater confidence in big businesses. We need it, of course,” the Premier said.

T.P.