All our fellow-citizens who have ever had an occasion or better to be said misfortune to undergo the terribly bureaucratic process of business registration perhaps will regret now that they didn’t have such an opportunity then.
Thus what did the law-abiding citizens of RA do when they wanted to register their own business officially as individual entrepreneurs or legal entities and become tax-payers? First they used to go to the State Register, find out what documents were required, then choose the firm name, wait for some days till the agency of property rights would answer whether it was allowed to use that certain name, if it hadn’t already been registered or it wasn’t confusingly similar to an already registered name. Then they used to go to the bank and pay the state fee of the firm name. Having taken the check they used to go to the State Register and find out that they had to pay the state fee of registration. They used to pay, come to the State Register with the check and apply for registration. As a rule they used to offer a bribe in the amount of 2-3 thousand for the work to be done faster. If regulations were required as well, they paid several thousand drams so that the State Register employees would give them standard regulations. Yet this wasn’t all. After some days, when the desirable certificate of state registration was ready, they needed to take it and go to the State Revenue Committee, apply for a tax-payer account, and then some days later go to the State Revenue Committee again and get the account. All of this would last about 15 days and during this process the citizen would waste not only time and money but also some part of his nerves. Three days ago the Government presented the mechanism of “One window” according to which the citizen wouldn’t have to knock at several doors, collect required references and documents in order to get registered in the State Register any longer. With the system insertion the registration of legal entities will be done by “One window”. That is to say the registering entrepreneur won’t go to the State Revenue Committee, then to the agency of property rights anymore and won’t make separate payments. All of that will be done from one place. As Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan has mentioned several structures have cooperated in order to implement this project so as the citizen doesn’t have to collect information from different state departments to register an enterprise in RA. He said: “The data bases of six departments are already compatible, and the professionals sitting here have the chance to compare them and the citizens won’t be additionally burdened”. That is to say the new mechanism provides getting the account number of the tax-payer from the State Revenue Committee as well as the firm name from the agency of property rights automatically. And the passport data is checked by means of the social card basic supply from “Norq” information center. Besides the above mentioned departments every government body gets a chance to use the basic supply of the Register by an electronic version: that is to say the necessity of requiring senseless references between state departments vanishes. But the process is much easier particularly for those who are Internet literate. You simply have to go to www.e-register.am and register the business online sitting in front of the computer. This is not more complicated than registering an e-mail and it requires just a few minutes. As to payments, they may be done by means of payment terminals located in every supermarket, or if you have a bank account, by an online transfer. After the registration of an LTD it is possible to attain a typical charter enacted by the government decision, which means that there is no need to give money to the employees of the State Register. In a word, this is one of the cases when we have to praise what’s good. A really good mechanism has been created, which really saves the nerves of people, their time and money. According to Tigran Sargsyan they announced about this program back a year ago. This was also one of the priorities of the RA Justice Ministry to allow the RA citizens provide quality services to RA citizens. “This will create a more favorable environment for business development in Armenia because right after the registration of the enterprise the RA citizens are entering into the business field,” mentioned the prime minister. However, in spite of the assumption that this program of the government is good or bad it doesn’t solve the problems as a whole. The thing is that all the bureaucratic fuss starts after the registration of the business. The citizen appears in the tax field and immediately appears in the attention of all the state bodies. It means that this very much resembles the famous joke when the dead man has the opportunity to choose between the hell and paradise. The latter prefers the luxury and illuminated gates of the hell to rusted doors of hell and enters hell. “Were you cheated to the commercial?” says the devil and takes him to the boiler reserved for the hell visitor. Perhaps that’s a cruel comparison but I guess the conditions of the business should have been so that the citizen wouldn’t regret about thee 5 minutes he would spend for registering it.