On August 2nd, CSO incubator participants, together with project lawyer-expert Narek Yenokyan, had a meeting with Deputy Chairman of SRC (State Revenue Committee) Arthur Manukyan and other SRC representatives in the scope of the “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project funded by the European Union.
At first, Yenokyan presented the objectives of the project and the work carried out in its scope. Discussions on sectoral issues ensued.
Satik Badeyan, the President of the Association of Social Enterprises of Armenia, mentioned that at that moment they were engaged in developing a new strategy on development of small and medium businesses. In this process, Satik Badeyan attached great importance to coopereation with the SRC. SRC Deputy Chairman Arthur Manukyan noted that they were ready to provide the necessary assistance.
Anahit Shahzadyan, the President of the “Territorial Business Centre” Business Support NGO, raised the issue of lack of legal awareness among regional SMEs. In response to this, the SRC representative said that their employees had regular meetings in Yerevan and in marzes, conducting awareness seminars on the RA tax legislation. Anahit Shahzadyan highlighted the importance of these events.
Customs clearance reference/control prices were also mentioned during the event. NGO representatives were interested in whether inflation was going to happen soon or not. SRC representatives assured them that artifical inflation was not possible.
Armen Petrosyan, a representative from the “Development Principles” NGO, asked about official clarifications. SRC representatives replied that the process of providing official clarifications was transferred to the domain of the RA Ministry of Finance.
Anush Aslanyan, a representative from the “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities” NGO about the problems of persons with disabilities in the process of using SRC resources. To be more specific, she spoke about the level of user-friendliness of the SRC official website in terms of meeting the needs of people with disabilities. The SRC representative responded that, even though the official SRC website did not have a special design for people with disabilities, the hotline system enabled them to successfully receive information on the activities of the SRC through calls.
In the end, the participants highlighted the need for constructive dialogue between the state and civil society representatives.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a consortium of civil society organizations, which are the “Armenian Lawyers’ Association” NGO, Agora Central Europe o.p.s (an NGO from the Czech Republic), the “Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS” NGO, the “International Center for Human Development” Public Organization, the “SME Cooperation Association” NGO and the Union of Communities of Armenia.
The overall objective of the project is to enhance the influence of CSOs and their coalitions on the public policy process. This will enable the organisations (those that already work in target coalitions) to gain new resources, unite civil society experts and encourage their participation in the formation of local and national policy agenda, identify common issues and priorities and go to the government with constructive and strategic policy initiatives.
In the scope of the project sub-grants are/will be allocated to CSOs and CSO coalitions. They will be targeted at public policy development and will have tangible results in the 9 project target sectors: justice, human rights, public finance management, business, education, social sector: social inclusion of children with disabilities, agriculture, economy, energy.
