According to the data of the State Revenue Committee (SRC) in 2008 approximately 102 thousand tons of sugar worth 31 million 197 thousand AMD was imported to Armenia. This number is the cost at the border.
As they informed from the STC the customs tax for sugar is 20% VAT. After doing a simple math calculation we understand that last year the net cost of 1 kilo sugar was 93.6 AMD. We add to this amount the customs tax, which is nearly 19 AMD per kilo and the price becomes 112 AMD. After this product reaches Armenia it doesn’t take many resources to reach it to the consumer. The product should only be commuted to the stores from the warehouses. No matter how much human effort goes on transporting the sugar to the stores it will hardly be more than 120 AMD per kilo. As we were informed from several stores they buy sugar from a wholesale market at 245 AMD and the retail price of sugar in stores is 245-260 AMD. It is known that sugar is only imported by an NA MP Samvel Alexanyan. This simple calculation shows that the MP receives double income from 1 kilo of sugar. So his income is approximately as much as he pays to import sugar to Armenia – 120 AMD. It means that only in 2008 Alexanyan received 31 million USD profit. We have the same picture this year as well. Reminder: the trade of staple goods in wholesale markets in quite shady and often stays outside the tax field. The stores do not submit product notes to the tax service on what goods and in what amount they received/sold products because the wholesale businessmen do not provide them with that information. The tax and supervising bodies cannot do anything about that because almost all the goods imported to our country are monopolized and all the businesses are owned by the Armenian oligarchs. The company, which belongs to Alexanyan, also imports butter, natural oil, meat, rice, coffee, alcohol and many other goods. Besides that the MP likes to falsify Russian vodkas. There is almost no session of the RA Economic Competition Committee in which they wouldn’t discuss some issue of falsifying vodkas on part of Alexanyan’s company. But this mostly has a demonstrative character because this committee is not able to conduce to free market economy conditions in the country. It is not powerful enough as the member of the Legal State and currently member of the governmental coalition Heghine Bisharyan defined Alexanyan as an oligarch, who’s richer than the state. According to the same official data last year 16 thousand tons of rice worth 9.5 million USD was imported to Armenia. The SRC also informed that in the line of this product the VAT is 20%. By doing the same math as above it turns out that one kilo of rice should cost 220 AMD. But in the stores rice is sold at 500-700 AMD per kilo. Thus, in the case of rice the importer spent about 9.5 million USD to import rice to Armenia last year but the profit amounted to 40.5 million USD. Judging from this fact we can say that the importers receive at least double income when they realize their goods in the Armenian market. It is already the 5th month of 2009 but the incompletion of the state budget gradually enhances. Of course, the product circulation also reduced but shady economy scales haven’t decreased at all. The government doesn’t undertake any step to take out the economy from the shade, in other words from their pockets. In order to cover the negative gaps of the budget they request money from Russia and international structures. We submitted the abovementioned mathematical calculations to economists MPs and asked them to comment how fair and moral it is ask money from aboard instead of cutting the shade in our own country and bringing the corrupt businessmen to the tax field. “I don’t think that the situation is like you portrayed. It’s a matter of survey,” said RPA member Gagik Minasyan. A Prosperous Armenia MP Vardan Bostanjyan also refused commenting. “As long as Armenia’s economy is strictly monopolized as long as certain branches of economy are in the hands of selected individuals it will continue remaining in the same miserable state. No one today is allowed to import 200 kilograms of sugar. The customs services will not allow them to do so. This is a state policy conducted since Kocharyan’s presidency. The motive besides the economic, which implies super profits, made itself manageable by the political field. It is an axiom that if there is a small and medium business it means that there is contrast of opinions in politics as well. In politics as well can survive parties and organizations of contrasting views. It is the best index of recovering the good governance. But when there is authoritarianism then everything becomes manageable only by the government and the state. Now our country chose the second option and the immense difference of these numbers could become a new investment or factory instead of flowing into the pockets of some 40-50people,” in this regard said economic and former mayor of Yerevan Vahagn Khachatryan.