Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, at the government session on March 19, recalled the times when business lived in an atmosphere of total fear of the state apparatus.
As a vivid example, he described the absurd reality of the past, when businessmen could be raided by special forces simply for daring a high-ranking official to beat a card game. According to the head of the government, if anyone took the risk of defeating the President of the SRC or the Minister of Finance in a blot, the next day the security forces would invade him to retaliate and accuse him of mockery.
Pashinyan emphasized that such arbitrariness seems unimaginable today, as do the huge debts accumulated by the state towards the private sector. He reminded that before the change of power in 2018, the government owed 60 billion drams in VAT to the business, and no one dared to even hint at the return of these funds, fearing a real “tax terror”.
Currently, according to the Prime Minister, this debt has been completely repaid, and the value added tax refund system is working in full automatic mode, erasing the dark realities of the past from the public’s memory.
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