“There is a new innovation in the New NGO Law,” Mr. Karen Zadoyan, President of the Armenian Lawyers’ Association, “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project Manager said at the training for NGOs on the New NGO Law, which was held today.
He explained that he was talking about the introduction of the beneficiaries’ institute, which is directly related to the fact of entrepreneur activities of NGOs. “I would like to draw your attention to the beneficiaries. Why so? I shall draw comparison with the circumstance of NGOs’ involvement in entrepreneurship, which involves risks. For example, are you aware that under the Law on Profit Tax gratuitous assets (including member fees) are not considered as revenues? However, the law does not provide explanation of “gratuitous assets”,” Karen Zadoyan said and added that under the term of “gratuitous assets” the State Bodies and in particular the State Revenue Committee consider also the grants provided for the needs of the organization, as well as the provision of services for donors. “Whereas they consider the assets that are for the program beneficiaries shall be charged with profit tax. This is a very serious circumstance. If their approach is formalized, then all non-governmental organizations may face serious social problems as all organizations provide services to their beneficiaries on the account of grant funds.”
Karen Zadoyan advised the NGOs to fix the scope of their beneficiaries in their statutes. “If we mention about groups of beneficiaries in the statute as in case of the members and stipulates that the same services are also provided to them, we shall neutralise the risks from this aspect. Therefore, if you have groups of beneficiaries and beneficiary groups, then I would recommend to clearly mention it during the re-registration,” ALA President said.
According to Mr. Arkadi Sahakyan, Lawyer of the Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE), the New NGO Law includes controversial provisions, especially in the process of reorganization of the associations of legal entities. “If in the past we were guided merely by a few articles of the Civil Code, in fact, the entire contents of the unions was based on the same NGO Law, and our activity has not changed in terms of content; today, new provisions are stipulated for the purpose of this law. Such provisions are stipulated for the commercial entities, such as the requirement of the transfer deed during restructuring,” the lawyer said.
Mr. Harutyun Aleksanyan, President of “Ellegia” NGO, believes that the law should facilitate the NGO activities on the one side and make the organizations become accountable. “Legislation should have such aim. The current changes have positive and negative aspects. There are unsolved issues, especially related with entrepreneur activities, which need simplification and streamlining.”
Notably, the training is conducted in the scope of the Europe Days.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” action is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a Consortium of civil society organizations, which are “Armenian Lawyers’ Association”, Agora Central Europe o.p.s (an NGO from the Czech Republic), Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS, “International Center for Human Development” Public Organization, SME Cooperation Association and Union of Communities of Armenia.
Gevorg Tosunyan
Aleksander Sargsyan
