The high-ranking officials of the State Taxation Bodies have also taken notice of this. Some can consider this as the flaw in the work of the Armenian State Taxation Service in the regions, while others are inclined to think that economy is declining in the Shirak region. The Shirak region makes up 9% of Armenia’s area. As of January 1, 2006, the population of Shirak region was 281,400, however with its level of industry, Shirak was the eighth region in 2005. As a whole, the specific weight of the industrial products of Shirak region was only 2.1%, 1.6% in small circulation of products, and 2.6% in the field of services. The mark for agriculture is a little better (the Shirak region produces 10% of agricultural products), but that doesn’t really give a high number when you count the taxes.
The industry of the Shirak region is poor. The cultivation industry in the region makes up 76.8% as produce, 20.4% for the production of electricity, gas and distribution, 2.8% for the mine industry.
Food and alcohol production have the highest levels of specific weight-83.9%. Based on the results of 2005, there has been a reduction in production and sales in all fields, except the production of cars and equipment. In 2005, the number of rock-cultivating machines has gone up, spongy liquids, tiles made out of natural rocks, milk and dairy products, beer and non-alcoholic beverages, cheese, rugs and socks production, while the number of cut tuffs, technological equipment, bread and granary products, wine, meat, non-mineral construction materials, knitted fabric and cast-iron production has gone down. The “Arshaluys”, “RockCultCar”, the “Shirak”, “Cumayr-97”, “Amasia cheese factory”, “ArmenCarpet”, “Grinding”, “Construction materials” of Akhuryan, “Glass Machine” of Artik, “ArmCarpet”, “VEVG” joint-stock companies, the hydro-electric station of Gyumri named after Mnjoyan, “Carpets”, “HATM”, “Anbert”, “Atoyan and friends”, “Rosa-92”, “AMM”, “Nelly”, “Gevorg and Vahan”, “Miroyan tuff”, “Natural Rock” and other companies have gone down in production. Last year, five companies started working again, while there are eight companies that haven’t produced anything. It’s worth mentioning that 90% of industry of Armenia is in the second largest city of Armenia-Gyumri.
The lack of the business culture and the non-transparent work of the companies of the Shirak region must be added to the abovementioned statistical numbers. You can come across a number of difficulties when trying to find information about this or that company of the region. There are only 40 registered companies on the websites of the Shirak region, when as of May 1, 2006, there were 3148 state-registered companies in Shirak of which 1881 are based in Gyumri.
It’s a little odd that the region with thousands of companies doesn’t have at least one taxpaying representative in the list of 300 largest taxpayers of Armenia, no matter how large the industry field of the region is. Many companies of the region (productive, constructional or service) not only work in the region, but also nationwide. Besides that, the person traveling around Gyumri will never think that the companies are not large taxpayers. You can see some foreign brand cars, newly constructed villas and trade centers despite the poverty and misery. In fact, the cars, villas and trade centers belong to a few rich people. Question: are they only constructed by the “people working abroad”?-of course not. Most of that money has been earned in the Shirak region and had to be included in the state budget a long time ago.