Back in the day, when a number of economists and journalists were warning that the credits and loans received from foreign donors will became a headache for Armenia, the officials of relevant sectors would try to calm them down by saying that the foreign debt is in the allowable limits and would advise not to worry about the state. The time showed (in the near it will become more evident) that they were right. But in this case in order to determine the right or wrong we should understand whether the headache is caused to the state or average citizens. And if we take into account that there is enormous difference between the people and the state and that the officials are demonstrating information far from reality it turns out that there is no headache for the state. The headache is for average citizens in the form of taxes and customs fees. A week ago the head of the World Bank in Armenia Aristomene Varudakis mentioned that the foreign debt is growing rapidly. But on the other hand he added that there is no need to worry. All is necessary to be done is to be able to acquit the debt. “And for that it is necessary to levy more taxes,” mentioned Varudakis. Now it is this provision that is demonstrated in the policy course of the government. We even reached the point that we get to pay to the state for holding a dog in our homes. The rest, such as fight against oligopolies, diversification of the economy, supporting the domestic producer, are merely nice words. According to logic, concrete steps should be taken to recover the economy from the crisis. It means that first of all the base of taxation should be increased. This assembles the tactics of trying to scrape the empty jar of honey to get whatever possible left. However, first of all it is necessary to fill in the jar with honey (or at least not ban the jar-filler from doing this) and only then be sufficed with the desire of eating the honey. In our country the exact opposite is being done and this is depicted as victory. Two days ago, almost all the media outlets of the country adverted to the information on the January-February inflows of the State revenue Committee. Armenian tax and customs authorities collected a total of 51.1 billion Drams of different revenues in the first month of 2010, by 22.3% or 9.3 billion Drams more than a year ago, the ministry of finance reported. According to the ministry, 40.2 billion Drams were collected as taxes and duties, of which 21.9 billion Drams were collected as VAT, by 20.5% more than in 2009 January. Also 3.5 billion Drams were collected as excise taxes, 4.6 billion Drams as profit taxes, 4.4 billion Drams as income taxes, 2 billion Drams as customs duties, 916,2 million Drams as state dues and 1.7 billion Drams as fixed payments. According to the ministry, the amount of collected mandatory social insurance payments rose by 41.7% from 2009 January to 6.8 billion Drams. Other non-tax revenues totaled 4.2 billion Drams or 68.5% of the quarter projection. The Armenian government plans to collect this year 742 billion Drams in revenues and spend 935 billion Drams. The projected deficit is 193.4 billion AMD. It is really good that a positive dynamics is formed. The thing is that they have tried to impressively deliver this information to the TV audience. And one of the media outlets added by its part that the Committee doesn’t mention at the expense of what these revenues were added. We thought that the media reporters are supposed to ask questions like this to the state officials and not make guesses. For example, they were supposed to find out how come the economy grows by 2.4% and the state budget inflows – by 8.4%. Maybe if asked they could have found out that the budget was filled due to the reduction of the black market. The release would turn out to be more impressive. The State Revenue Committee is doing its work by trying to collect as much revenue as possible and as much as mentioned in the budget. Let us agree that it is possible to collect money only when it exists. But in this case the Committee has a problem in creating and getting this money. And it is not its function to reform the economy. In fact the other state bodies should be in charge of this. It means there must be a joint approach, the basis of which shouldn’t be only levy maximum amount of money but the increase of the base of taxation. In our country the logic is different though. As of the activation of the business then in this field these are only words. As a rule, when the government speaks about the small and medium businesses it always mentions the facilitation of the crediting process. Meanwhile, any bank of Armenia demands stable incomes and mortgage. These are conditions, the existence of which doesn’t require credits any more. Any businessman, who had to deal with the banks, will confirm these words. In fact great efforts are needed to strengthen businesses. There is simply no need to hinder the development of businesses. For instance, one state structure shouldn’t demand from the same citizen to submit a state form from some other state structure. The citizen wastes time and energy for some simple piece of paper and gets to deal with the “sassy” faces of low-class state officials. And this is happening in the era of high technologies when any 7-year-old kid can send my e-mail any information to another kid living in Mozambique. By the way, two days ago our government started to speak with real about the investment the system of electronic governance, which will reduce the amount of time spent on documentation, will decrease bureaucracy and the communication of the citizen with the statesmen and thus lower the corruption risks. This is a good initiative but as you know it is not going to be exactly like this. Let us bring another example. The international partner of the domestic businessman sends the latter of a catalog with a few sample (let’s say perfume) to demonstrate it to the members of the domestic market. The foreign partner sends the stuff via the DHL so that it gets here fast. But this stuff remains in the customs service instead of reaching the domestic businessman. As a result the businessman here has to pay 10.000 AMD for some paperwork to get his stuff (worth 10-15 thousand AMD). It seems like a minor nuance but many people have encountered this and got discouraged even before they’d start their business. The solution of this wouldn’t take too many efforts from the state. And the use will be more tangible than all kinds of trainings with their coffee breaks. All is needed is goodwill to help the businesses and not just levy money.
