Author: Hovik Karapetian

YEREVAN, September 12. /ARKA/. The Armenian government decided today to provide tax and customs benefits to three companies, which are to import equipment and raw materials.

Deputy Minister of Economy Artak Kamalyan said private entrepreneur Irina Kochoyan intends to invest 80 million drams in the purchase of equipment and 150 million drams in the purchase of raw materials. The raw materials are to be used for sewing clothes in the town of Hrazdan, where 15-20 new jobs will be created.

The company is to produce 600 million drams worth clothes and some 450 million drams worth clothes are to be sold in Armenia, and the rest in Russia and other countries, which are members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

The second company, ANIPLAST LLC, is exempted from paying customs duties, since it pledged to invest 1.4 billion drams in the production of film for packaging food products and create  20 new jobs.

The third company, which received customs privileges for the import of equipment and raw materials is Ariko-Gor CJSC. It intends to invest 457 million drams in the production of notebooks and albums for drawing in the town of Abovyan and create 6-9 new jobs.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan added that the companies will make about 2 billion drams worth investments.

“In this context, I would also like to note that we have now 604,000 officially registered employees in the country. Some people argued that the growth should be credited to the government’s effort to bring employees to the net, but the growth made already 64 thousand people and it’s impossible to determine how many people came out of the shadow and  how many of them are newly registered workers,” Pashinyan said. ($1 – 476.34 drams). –0–

YEREVAN, September 2. /ARKA/. Sanitek Armenia, a  branch of Sanitek International Group –a multinational waste management company headquartered in Lebanon, accused the Yerevan Municipality of failing  to pay it 330 million drams. In a letter to Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan the company says  more than 300 million drams (about $630,000) were withheld from the amounts that were to be paid to the company in return for its services.

The company quotes the mayor as saying previously that  the municipality  is only responsible for making timely payments for garbage removal. The company says that a new company  created by the municipality  collects garbage with a gross violation of the law.

For several months, residents of Yerevan have been complaining over the failure of Sanitek’s Armenian division to collect garbage throughout the city.

Earlier, Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan publicly expressed displeasure at the work of the Sanitek company, stressing that Yerevan residents will no longer tolerate its ineffective work.

In the spring of this year, Sanitek was twice fined for failing to fulfill its contractual obligations in the amount of 13 million drams (more than $26,800) and 26 million drams ($54,100).

Sanitek Armenia, the branch of Sanitek International Group –a multinational waste management company headquartered in Lebanon, was chosen by the Yerevan Municipality to handle sanitary cleaning and waste recycling of the capital city and until recently it was a monopolist in this business. -($1 – 476.17 drams)