On 29 March, Ms Astghine Paosyan, Project Manager of the “CSOs for Sustainable and Transparent Energy Development” (EU4STED) Program implemented in the scope of the EU-funded “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project, Mr. Karen Zadoyan, the CCD Project Manager, President of the Armenian Lawyers’ Association, met with Mr. Karen Brutyan, the First Deputy Minister of Finance and the representatives of other subdivisions. The meeting was held in the Ministry of Finance of the RA.
“Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project Manager, President of the ARMENIAN Lawyers’ Association Karen Zadoyan, presented the program, and thanked for the meeting and cooperation
“Our cooperation with the Ministry of Finance has a history of years and the format is a constructive dialogue. The purpose of our today’s meeting is to discuss the issues of application of energy efficiency requirements referring goods and services provided by the Republic of Armenia Law “On Procurement,” Karen Zadoyan said.
He noted that it would be desirable to view the issue “beyond the box” to solve the problems of a sphere, which in a chain way will bring to solving similar issues in other areas. According to Karen Zadoyan, a serious expert work has been done by project implementers and now it is desirable to get an assessment of the state structures.
The Deputy Minister also welcomed the initiative of cooperation, noting that a review process has been initiated in public procurement management, which aims to increase the targeted orientation of public resource management.
“We have initiated a large-scale public procurement discussion with our partner government agencies, with partner donors, where our systems more closely correspond to international best practices, and here active involvement of the public sector is very important. We are ready for a continuous and uninterrupted discussion,” Karen Brutyan said.
He suggested once again to define exactly what problem should be solved, what should be done to resolve the issue, who will be the actors and what roadmap should be made for its implementation.
Ms Astghine Pasoyan, Director of “Energy Saving Fund” NGO, co-founder of the Coalition of CSOs for Sustainable and Transparent Energy Development, noted that the start for the dialogue with the Ministry was the procurement of energy-efficient goods and services in public procurement.
“We have conducted a lot of research. All buildings in Armenia consumed 40% of the energy, the public buildings consumed 10% and half of this can be saved,” she said.
The Cooperation Agreement was also reached between the Ministry of Finance and the Armenian Business Coalition, which was created in the scope of the “New SME Development Strategy for Armenia” project implemented by the sub grant provided in the scope of CCD.
Mr. Karen Brutyan mentioned that the ministry is ready to discuss the elimination of obstacles to business representatives, as well as proposals on amendments to legislative acts.
“We also want to make some changes in the procurement process by implementing public control institutions, for example, regarding the phenomenon of discriminative nature of specifications. We want to involve the beneficiaries in this process so that that they will come to the conclusion that the as a result of the professional examination whether the nature of this or that specification is artificial or issues from the customer’s need,” he said.
Karen Zadoyan spoke about Bizprotect.am website, which gives citizens an opportunity to openly or anonymously inform about different issues related to state structures. According to him, there were many indications related to the technical characteristics of the procurement, and as a result of their collection a number of issues were raised.
CSOs and representatives of the Ministry agreed to include the issues received through this platform as a topic for consideration during the upcoming discussions.
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 (networks) on the public policy process. This will enable the organizations (that already work in target coalitions) to gain new resources, unite civil society experts and encourage them to participate in the formation of local and national policy agenda, identify the common problems and priorities and to apply to the government with constructive and strategic policy initiatives.
In the scope of the project, sub-grants have been provided to CSOs and CSO coalitions, aiming at public policy development and achieving tangible results in the 9 target sectors: justice, human rights, public finance management, business, education, social sector: social inclusion of children with disabilities, agriculture, economy, energy.
