YEREVAN, MAY 15, NOYAN TAPAN. The Armenian president will have a meeting with representatives of Armenia's business circles in a few days. During the meeting, some draft political decisions on tax administration will be submitted to the president, the chairman of the Union of Employers (Manufacturers and Businessmen) of Armenia (UMBA) Arsen Ghazarian stated at the May 14 press conference. In his words, the rates of achieving a growth in the efficiency of tax and customs administration will increase in case of using IT tools. "As a public figure and businessman, I believe that if the current government pursues the strategy and tactics it has adopted, the situation in these sectors in a year will notably differ from the current situation. We will finally be able to speak about qualitative changes to be perceived by ordinary businessmen and citizens," he stated. In the opinion of A. Ghazarian, it is impossible to improve efficiency in the customs sector without a serious use of IT. The major task here is e-governance, the introduction of the institution of electronic customs brokers, which will allow to rule out the contacts of the representatives of enterprises with customs officials. He said that it is already the second month that quite serious steps have been taken to make reforms in customs administartion, such as the electronic declaration of goods subject to customs clearance, raising the status of customs warehouses, and assessment of the values of goods in customs warehouses and their customs clearance. "We have held four discussions with employees of the State Customs Committee (SCC) adjunct to the RA government, and a sitting of the newly-created Public Council adjunct to the SCC took place on May 14. It is the second month that the UMBA has not registered any cases of protectionism and corruption with respect to the SCC," A. Ghazarian said. According to him, the use of information technologies by the State Tax Service adjunct to the RA government is a necessary but insufficient means of improving administration. The procedures of presenting tax reports in an electronic way and checking the tax liabilities of enterprises, which have not made violations in the past, by an analysis (without checks) are now being discussed and will be approved in a week or two. A. Ghazarian underlined that the operative work of the tax service will focus on the fight against shadow economy. He said that the possibility of introducing the system of centralized electronic control of the data of cash registers in fairs by the tax service is being discussed.

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