Expert: Monopoly, oligarchic norm of production of cognac from the  past needs to be abolished

ArmInfo. The monopoly, oligarchic norm of brandy production from the past still existing in Armenia needs to be abolished. A similar opinion was expressed to ArmInfo  by  the Chairman of the National Wine Center Avag Harutyunyan.

"In neighboring Georgia, in many other countries, anyone can produce  wine and brandy. The norm adopted in our country in 1998 was adopted  solely in the interests of the oligarchy and in fact deprived small  enterprises of the opportunity to produce brandy. Today it is  necessary to eliminate this injustice and enable to withstand spirits  for everyone who is ready to do it. In this sense, the Minister of  Economy presented the situation and the problem very true on the  basis of preliminary discussions with manufacturers, "he said.  On  March 19, Minister of Economy Tigran Khachatryan presented to the  government draft amendments to the law "On Alerting Services to  Activities" and a package of related projects providing for producers  who decided to establish production of cognac to be able to pay 150  thousand drams to the budget in the first three years of operation  instead of the existing 30 million drams. We are talking exclusively  about the minimum period of aging of alcohols before it turns into  brandy. 

The chairman of the State Revenue Committee opposed the project,  noting that the annual tax of 10 million drams is an element of the  cost of future brandy. And it excludes the possibility of producing  and selling cheap cognac. As a result of the discussions, the project  was sent back to the SRC for the purpose of further discussion and  possible refinement.

Harutyunyan notes that the project presented by the Minister of  Economy was the result of more than 10 years of discussion. According  to him, the former authorities did not accept this project in the  interests of large manufacturers, who are also members of parliament.  According to him, under Robert Kocharian it was generally decided to  introduce an annual fee of 15 million drams for the production of all  alcoholic beverages, without exception.

"We started to fight, and we managed to lower the state duty on wine  production to 25 thousand drams.  However, our ten-year struggle to  reduce duties on the production of cognac was not successful - the  cognac actually remained a monopoly. After the change of power, we  met with Prime Minister Pashinyan several times and explained "that  lowering the state duty has nothing to do with counterfeiting brandy.  In reality, it is large producers who fake it, small ones simply  cannot be solved, especially without the support" above ", he said.

According to Harutyunyan, after the change of power in the country,  this provision should have been simply abolished, meanwhile, today  people far from understanding the problems of the sphere impede its  development. As a result of this standard, small wine producers can  only produce alcohol, and are deprived of the ability to withstand it  in order to turn into brandy.

"In such circumstances, they have only one thing left - to sell this  alcohol to large monopolist producers.  Small producers make wine  from top-quality raw materials, the raw materials are used for lower  quality alcohol production, which is then sold to large companies.  Thus, you just need to legitimize the whole process, which will lead  to an increase in the quality of products as a whole and will force  everyone to pay taxes, "Harutyunyan concluded.