Economist: “Monopoly is fixed in Constitution” (video)
Economist Vilen Khachatryan doesn’t consider the fight against monopolies to be realistic. Today he started the press conference with journalists, reading one of the paragraphs from the RA new Constitution: “The Article 59, point 2 of the Constitution reads that the limitation of competition, possible types of monopolies and their permissible size can be determined only by law for the purpose of defense of public interests. By this, in fact, monopolies aren’t ruled out in Armenia, it means that the monopoly has already been fixed in Constitution, there are simply some limitations.” According to the words of the economist the Government tries to fight against monopoly, when there is no option to ban their existence through Constitution, “Especially, if we take into consideration that any company can divide its 100 percent share and do its business within the frames of five companies, doing nothing illegal, so nothing can be done against it,” said Vilen Khachatryan. The economist doesn’t think, though, that the problem is only in monopoly. He is sure that even if, for example, there is free competition in the importation sector, there will be privileged parties, “There are companies, which have privileges and import goods without clearance. Even if everybody begins importing, first of all there must be fight against untaxed goods.”
