Armenian government intends to ban importers from being in retail and wholesale trade simultaneously

Armenia's Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan after holding consultations and discussions in the government related to fighting corruption, bribery and monopolies came to a conclusion that formally there are no monopolies in import of essential goods, he made the statement during government's session.

The matter concerns market of butter, flour, rice, buckwheat, bananas, oranges, margarine, infant food, fowl, medicine, petroleum and diesel fuel. As the prime minister stated although there are no monopolies in the markets of abovementioned goods, however import of them is considered as monopolistic by the society. Abrahamyan thinks that the reason of this is that the market of these goods is over centralized.

This circumstance breaches standard of healthy economic competition, oust small and medium players from the market, violates consumers' rights and contains serious corruption risks. It is necessary to put an end to this situation and the process should start rom the key products", Abrahamyan stated. 
He instructed Economy Minister Artsvik Minasyan to develop proper list of procedures of the import of abovementioned goods. The data book should contain all the necessary documents, expertise, certificates payment lists and terms. All this information must be presented on the official websites of Economy Ministry, Finance Ministry and State Income Committee. 

"Ensuring equal conditions for all the economy entities should remain in the focus of the government, and any unfounded divergence should be investigated. I instruct the Ministry of Economy and State Income Committee to develop mechanisms to ban simultaneous wholesale and retail sale by large businesses. In such conditions business should sale the products only via online platforms which are controlled by the government", the prime minister said. 

He also instructed the National Center for Legislative Regulation to thoroughly study in a two month period all the procedures related to import, present mechanisms for facilitating these procedures, ease requirements, necessary for receiving certificates. Deputy Prime Minister Vache Gabrielyan will supervise the fulfillment of these tasks.