Merging and separation of various ministries in Armenia and then again merging and separation is just a slight move by the hand without serious research, being accountable to the public and are only to satisfy their own “whim”. After operating as one super ministry barely for 1.6 years, the Ministry of Finance and State Revenue Committee are again separated. When in 2014 the SRC and Ministry of Finance merged, the then Deputy Minister of Finance, Pavel Safaryan, who is one of the senior long-term officials in the Finance Ministry, in his interview to a media, said, “The ministry that is implementing financial policy must also implement a tax policy. But when they are separated, life shows that, especially in our case, often not right solutions are given for the Finance Ministry begins having very theoretical understanding about the tax situation. I am confident that this merging will lead to more positive practical solutions.” In fact, the Finance Ministry failed to give positive practical solutions to the problems that now, they decided to separate.
Recall that these structures merged a short time after the appointment of Hovik Abrahamyan as a prime minister and although the press regularly circulated that Abrahamyan-Khachatryan relations are tense, the Prime Minister praised Khachatryan at the National Assembly, saying that he is professional and helped the SRC to develop. And now, this mega-ministry is separated by the RA Presidential decree. Moreover, the merging in 2014 was also substantiated by more efficient management, which the business and our economy did not feel. After the merging, the entrepreneurs were continuing to complain about the tax unnecessary redtape, corruption, heavy burden of taxes and as a result, thousands of businesses were closed. In other words, the government’s argument about merging was not inspiring trust from the very beginning, and the structural changes of the ministries, essentially, is a “game”, as a result, the ordinary employees are having stress and many are deprived of their jobs, but zero result on the development of economy.
Yesterday, RPA faction leader, Vahram Baghdasaryan, in an interview with the journalists, said that this separation is due to EaEU accession, constitutional reforms, agreement of 2 political forces, RA President’s speech on February 12 and the resulting implementation of provisions, development of a new economic policy, for which this separation is appropriate. Note that Armenian’s accession to the Eurasian Economic Union on September 3, 2013, was almost confirmed and, at least, no one in the government doubted that Armenia would suddenly make a turnover and would not access the EaEU. And thus, conditioning the separation of these ministries by the accession to the EaEU, to put it mildly, is not credible. As for Baghdasaryan’s substantiations with the constitutional amendment, then let’s note that the new Constitution defines that the SRC and the Finance Ministry should operate separately.
Baghdasaryan’s citing the agreement of 2 political forces which substantiated the “split” of the Finance Ministry again does not inspire trust; only the naïve would hope that one of the split and most important structures of the government may be handed over to the ARF. Note that the names of the heads of Finance Ministry and the SRC are already circulated. According to sources of “Haykakan Zhamanak” daily, Hovhannes Hovsepyan, the head of Serzh Sargsyan’s Control Service will be appointed as a head of tax and customs services, while Deputy Prime Minister Vache Gabrielyan will be appointed as a Finance Minister. The government representative’s other substantiation by the RA President’s speech on February 12 and the resulting implementation of provisions does not again inspire trust. The RA President, referring to the economic issues in his speech, said that equal competition terms should be provided in the economic life, sponsorship should be eliminated, the economic entities, including SMEs, should receive necessary assistance and economic incentives and so on. Ensuring equal competition in the country and elimination of sponsorship has nothing to do with merging and separation of ministries; this depends on the political, moreover, from the top. Generally, substantiating the separation of the ministry by the President’s speech is irrelevant because to make real reforms in the country, in addition to the political will, it is necessary to appoint knowledgeable, honest, incorrupt and homeland-loving professionals. Merging and separating ministries once a year, making replacement of unpleasant and pleasant persons, the system does not benefit, it is specific persons that benefit.
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Therefore, to convince the public that they are separating for achieving something good does not inspire trust. The structural changes taking place in these years show that the “greasy” positions in our country are given only to their own people, on a “special agreement” and in this case, the professional abilities and honesty are not important to them. All of this reminds me of a joke of Soviet times, “A village man goes to see the secretary of the regional committee and says, “Make me a head of a collective farm.” The Secretary asks in suspicion, “Can you work as a president of the collective farm?” The village man says with a sly smile, “Are you afraid that I will fall off the UAZ vehicles?”
Nelly BABAYAN, “Aravot” daily
