Prime Minister of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan has delivered an ultimatum to the big business demanding big businessmen to come out of "the shadow" by 1 July 2014 and observe equal conditions of entrepreneurship.
The prime minister told the government, Thursday, that he had met businessmen and bankers Wednesday and demanded them to work in a new way, observing equal conditions of business.
"I give everyone time till 1 July to start working differently, otherwise, we will have to apply administrative fines," the prime minister said. According to him, the meeting with the local business representatives was held without participation of mass media, but that circumstance has in no way reduced the seriousness of the demand.
Mass media representatives met with Economy Minister Karen Chshmarityan behind the scenes at the Government for comments on the prime minister's demand.
The minister said that Armenia is at a certain stage of economic development when new "rules of the game" must be applied to reduce the shadow, observe equal conditions between small and business enterprises and boost social-economic development. Meanwhile, the minister could not specify the current volume of shadow turnover in the country and how much it will be reduced after 1 July.