Ara Hovsepyan
At the end of the day, have $16.6 million been spent on lectures for farmers or $6.6 million? www.aravot.am tried to find the answer to this question and to find out how it had turned out that the same report on expenses regarding Water to Market (WtM) Activity of the Millennium Challenge Corporation that Prosperous Armenia Party parliamentary group member Naira Zohrabyan had “in hand” mentioned $16.6 million and the document uploaded to the website of the Ministry of Finance mentioned $6.6 million.
Let us first mention that the project is over and the Millennium Challenge Corporation state nonprofit organization is in the process of dissolving. And Edgar Avetyan, the director of the Center for Managing Foreign Financial Projects, Ministry of Finance, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am that he had merely inherited the documents regarding the project and all that was in the archive, “In this case, we just take those numbers and respond to the requests of journalists and all the other people, taking into account the numbers that are in the agreement or the numbers that are in the report.”
According to Mr. Avetyan, since there are agreements that have expired and there is the so-called period of eliminating defects, in this case, the director, as he said, just makes sure that contractors eliminate defects.
Ara Hovsepyan, the former director of the Millennium Challenge Account who had managed that project for 5 years and was currently the director of the North-South Road Corridor Investment Program state nonprofit organization refused to answer any question, explaining that he was not the head of the Millennium Challenge Account anymore. “You have been the director for 5 years, haven’t you?” in response to this question of ours, Mr. Hovsepyan said, “It doesn’t matter, I just cannot make any comments, because I don’t know in depth who gave what to whom, how he gave it, what is uploaded on the website and what numbers you are talking about. I don’t manage that project and it is not appropriate to ask me questions, I can say nothing else to you.” In response to a question of www.aravot.am whether he could at least say as a former director whether $6.6 million were not too much for lectures and how they had counted that such a big sum was needed for lectures, Mr. Hovsepyan refused to make a comment and urged to apply to the Center for Managing
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Foreign Financial Projects,” to which we had applied before the conversation with Mr. Hovsepyan. By the way, Mr. Avetyan had also urged us to talk with Mr. Hovsepyan about those issues.
The notice published by the Center mentions that $18.7 million were spent on trainings, of which the service provided by Vista Plus, a local organization, which is a part of the consortium managed by ACDI/VOCA, an American organization, accounted for $6.6 million, according to the agreement. Every participant’s course cost 6 650 AMD a day, which included the following expenses – the trainer’s salary, organization of the course, printed material, preparation of the auditorium, technical support, provision of food and two coffee breaks a day, transportation expenses etc. In general, 81.7 thousand farmers have been trained.
Let us remind that raising this issue, Naira Zohrabyan, a National Assembly member, drew attention of the Armenian Attorney General’s Office to the mismatch of numbers.
Nelly BABAYAN
