Armenia’s antitrust agency searching solutions to SME sector’s problems

YEREVAN, June 25. /ARKA/. Armenia’s State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition is looking into the SME sector’s problems and is developing solutions for them, Artak Shaboyan, the head of the commission, said Wednesday during a round-table discussion. 

He said the aim of the discussion is to identify this sector’s problems and outline the steps to be taken to ensure free competition here. 

Shaboyan said the problems beyond the commission’s competency will be readdressed to appropriate state agencies.

He said very often competition-related problems have deeper roots, which are within the bounds of other state agencies’ authority. Therefore, he said, the commission’s work should be more targeted, and companies themselves should point out problems.   

“Now the antitrust agency is working out legislative changes to support Armenia’s SMEs and create equal conditions for small and large companies,” Shaboyan said. 

Cornelia Skokov, director of the Armenian office of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), on her side, stressed the significance of free competition for market development saying SMEs will become key beneficiaries of the measures being taken to ensure free competition. 

Among SMEs’ problems the round-table discussion participants singled out unequal conditions specified by the law for importers and local manufacturers, high duties for producers and importers of spirits (AMD 15 million every year for all companies), the problems relating to introduction of excise labels for dairy products and unequal conditions for participation in tenders. --0-----