Epress.am News from Armenia
Representatives of Armenia's business circles and government officials have recently been discussing a new mandatory certification procedure which will soon be implemented in Armenia and will have a significant impact on imported goods from third countries, reporter Hayk Gevorgyan writes in local “Haykakan Zhamanak” daily.
Authorities, as stated by Gevorgyan, are trying as hard as possible to circumvent the issue so as to avoid speaking of the negative consequences of joining the Eurasian Economic Union.
The list of the products affected by the new regulations is so vast, the reporter stresses, that it is impossible to present it in its entirety: “In short, the majority of the non-EEU goods sold in our stores will have to undergo a mandatory certification process. What does that mean? Say, you are a 'small' businessman who has saved up 10 thousand dollars; you go to shopping centers in Turkey, Dubai, China, purchase multiple copies of one product, multiple copies of another one, and bring them to Armenia with the aim to resell. However, henceforth, according to the Eurasian Union regulations, you will not be able to do this. Even if you've decided to purchase a few phone chargers in China to see how they sell [in Armenia], you'll have to have a certificate. This is a procedure where there are not only legal fees, but also plain bribes. And it may happen that ten 1-dollar charges cost you more than 200 dollars.
“This directly contradicts the international trade procedures' facilitation 'ideology' which the government has until recently been speaking about.”
State officials, the reporter notes, will start convincing the people it's a “very good” procedure, products imported to Armenia have to be checked, get certified and so on: “Check what? The [less than 1-dollar] Chinese phone charger? Why? To collect a 100 dollars for the certification of each of the chargers? The buyer can easily check it: if [the charger] does not work, they won't buy it.”