I am strongly against presenting pawn shops as small and medium business since pawn shops can’t be viewed as such. This is what Head of the State Revenue Committee Davit Ananyan declared after his closed meeting with deputies of the Prosperous Armenia Party’s parliamentary faction, commenting on the possibility of raising the state duties for pawn shops and foreign exchange bureaus by 60 times.

According to him, fundamentally speaking, those providing financial services have no right to be viewed as small and medium businesses. “Armenia has 129 pawn shops that paid only AMD 148 million in taxes and 17 banks that paid AMD 49 billion in taxes last year. For this reason, we need to understand that the existence of pawn shops among organizations providing financial services has yet to be economically substantiated. We have to know if the activities of pawn shops contribute to economic development or not,” Ananyan said.