Business should not undergo mandatory audit. On the contrary, it is necessary to ease its financial burden as much as possible, Armenian Finance Minister Gagik Khachatryan said in Yerevan when commenting on ArmInfo's question about the Armenian Government's recent decision to relieve the large business of the need to undergo mandatory external audit.
To recall, since 2011 external audit has been compulsory for the large Armenian companies whose revenues or assets exceed 1 bln AMD.
The minister pointed out that the enforcement measures are unpleasant to business. In the meantime, he stressed that the idea of mandatory audit is to make businesses declare their revenues independently. Khachatryan said that the idea of mandatory audit has failed to give the expected results and now he wonders whether it is normal to force business to undergo audit. "Let business decide itself whether to conduct financial audit or not. For our part, we should do our best to ease their financial burden, to facilitate the tax administration and reduce their expenses. The country faces a lot of difficulties now", he stressed.
Meanwhile, ArmInfo's financial analysts think that the mandatory audit of large companies also served to solve the problem of companies' transparency and to create a favorable ground for investment activity in the countries, including activities of potential foreign investors. So, the removal of mandatory audit and publication of financial statements will not be favorable for the investment climate in Armenia.