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Armenian Premier Reprimands Agriculture Minister For Mismanagement

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  • Armenian Premier Reprimands Agriculture Minister For Mismanagement

    ARMENIAN PREMIER REPRIMANDS AGRICULTURE MINISTER FOR MISMANAGEMENT

    ARKA
    March 5, 2010

    YEREVAN, March 5. /ARKA/. Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan has
    voiced a stern reprimand to Agriculture Minister Gerasim Alaverdyan
    for improper fulfillment of his duties.

    On Thursday, speaking at the cabinet's meeting, he said that the
    government has singled out agriculture as one of its top-priority
    focuses in 2010.

    Sargsyan said the government intended to ensure a five-percent growth
    in this sector.

    It means all the limited state budget funds earmarked for this purpose
    must be utilized very effectively.

    "Armenian Control Chamber scrutinized the purchasing process in the
    agriculture ministry in 2008 and 2009 and found out grave faults,
    which we had to correct. The minister must pay a special attention
    to this problem," the premier said.

    He said that vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease are bought at
    a price twice higher than a real price.

    The Control Chamber attracted the ministry's attention to this fact,
    but things haven't been put right, and the situation even worsened
    in 2010.

    The PM-affiliated control service, after receiving this information
    from the Control Chamber, carried out own scrutiny and found out
    that Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, chief of the agriculture ministry's
    financial and economic accounting division, and Gevork Tovmasyan,
    an official in change of purchases in 2010, have done nothing to
    organize purchases properly.

    "More than that - the tender conditions gave a chance to win the
    tender only to one company. Calculations showed that there was room
    for lowering prices at least by 50%. If the Control Chamber didn't
    interfere, we would sustain immense losses," Sargsyan said.

    The prime minister instructed the agriculture minister to file a
    motion to the Civil Service Council for launching an investigation
    into the matter to dismiss the mentioned officials.
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