The case that “Royal Armenia” (RA) brought up against the State Customs Committee (SCC) for recognizing the increase in coffee prices as invalid last year finally came to an end yesterday at the Economic Court of Armenia after being delayed for so long.
According to RA representatives, the State Customs Committee has set an illogical customs price on coffee that they import. The company representatives appealed to the SCC and required them to present the calculations according to which they have set the customs prices. The SCC had to do that within 10 days, however, there have been no calculations.
During the previous court hearing, the SCC representative had presented his reply regarding the application sent by the RA. Once again, the RA gave an explanation and claimed that they were not satisfied with the SCC’s reply because the articles of the legislation stated have nothing to do with the requirement. The SCC representative asked the judge to give them some time to get acquainted with the statement written by the RA and provide a written reply; basically to delay the court hearing. Judge Y. Khundkaryan rejected and believes that there are no bases for that. The judge got acquainted with the proofs for five minutes and left to reach a verdict. During that time, the attorney for “Royal Armenia” company Gevorg Minasyan responded to some of our questions and confessed that he has no hopes that the court will solve the issue. After a while, Mr. Khundkaryan returned and read the verdict. As expected, it was not in favor of “Royal Armenia”. In other words, the court decided to reject the company’s appeal.
As we mentioned above, this was no surprise to anyone. Perhaps it is still a wonder for many as to why “Royal Armenia” continues to lead debates with the SCC and the court when everything is already decided beforehand. We get the impression that the company is trying to prove to society that the SCC is corrupted. If that is the only goal, then we can say that there is no need to do that. Society knows that for a long time. As for the company, it continues to suffer losses. Currently, “Royal Armenia” imports 1000 tons of coffee a year. If the coffee is imported as raw material so that it can be refined and later exported, then we have a temporary customs privation for which nothing is paid. That is why at the present, 80% of the coffee produced by the company is exported abroad. Compared to other importers, the company is not able to compete in the local market due to high customs prices. Mr. Minasyan stated that they are trying to console them by making them understand that the other companies give bribes instead of the low customs prices. The company administration try to cover up the losses by quality, however they don’t plan on surrendering and are ready to appeal to the court once again against the customs prices set on large quantities of coffee imported to Armenia.
If we add a little humor to all this, we can say that the SCC and the Economic Court are supporting export with their activities. What can you do about it? These people just care too much about our country’s economy.