The Government of the Republic of Armenia

The quality of services provided by the state is in the focus of attention of the Government. In this context, the Supervisory Service of the Government has carried out examinations in all such areas, which provide services to large number of citizens.

The Supervisory Service detected cases of apparent extortion affecting hundreds of citizens daily. To exclude the phenomenon, only in the last several months, the executive adopted important decisions regarding some industries. Those decisions, along with legislative changes, in the first place are directed at increasing the quality of state services, including exclusion of extortion.

In the RA Government session of April 21, RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan reminded about the RA President’s instruction on the necessity to increase, as soon as possible, the quality of services provided by the state.

“Radical decisions have been adopted to regulate the functions of rendering services on the one hand, and to prevent corruption risks in those industries on the other hand. It is a question of not only the procedure of providing passports where a success is recorded, but also the areas of driver’s issuing license, registration, recording and technical examination of vehicles. Indeed, if services provided by us in this industry are of low quality, there will be no trust towards us. Any manifestation of corruptive practices should be severely punished; otherwise, these decisions will not serve their true purpose”, said the RA Prime Minister.

The mentioned radical changes relate to the following areas: passport and visa issuing service, systems of receiving driver’s licenses, technical checkup of vehicles, registration and licensing of businesses, cadastre, and notary public service.

Technical checkups, without voluntarisms

Citizen will pay for technical examination of vehicles not at the technical checkup stations, but in banks. In the “One Stop Shop”, a driver can make all payments, receive a numbered coupon and stick it to the windshield of his vehicle.

This is a service used by 300 thousand citizens annually, and the process associated therewith bears (long ago and somewhat naturally) a formal nature. To obtain a technical checkup coupon, a citizen having a vehicle, used to spend extensive amount of time and money on various payments and make an additional payment at the technical checkup station too. As to whether the vehicle was in order, or not, ultimately, the employee of the technical checkup station was not much interested, especially if the driver himself had not interest in it. (Consider this option. Ultimately, the technical checkup station was not motivated to ensure proper technical condition of the vehicle, especially in cases where the driver was not interested either.) It should be mentioned that technical checkup stations do not bear any responsibility by the law in case of car accident involving the car inspected by them.

Thus, each year a driver passed through a mandatory process not having a qualitative impact on his vehicle in any way, yet impling a mandatory payment ranging from AMD 5,000 to AMD 7,000 determined at different technical checkup stations.

In this situation, the executive adopted a decision on making the process self-regulatory. Under the new procedure, the driver will check the amount of his property tax due to payment in the district municipality, and make all required payments in the bank, including environmental, technical checkup payments and state duty. The bank will provide the coupon to be posted on the windshield. In the bank, the citizen will be provided with a second coupon too, which allows the driver to ensure technical examination of his vehicle at the station preferred by him (thus, the financial flows of the technical checkup stations will depend on the quantity of serviced coupons). Hence, the technical checkup of own vehicle remains fully the owner’s responsibility; it is anticipated that the stations will be interested in provision of higher quality services, to attract more driver-clients.

The new technical checkup procedure will become effective from June 2011.

To prevent negative consequences of voluntary technical checkups and ensure technical examination of all vehicles, strict supervision will be exercised, where insurance companies too will act as monitors.

Issuing a driver’s license, by simplified procedure

The process of obtaining a driver’s license is simplified; the necessity to provide a medical certificate and participate in the driving courses is abolished.

The formerly applied procedure of issuing a driver’s license created a fertile soil for extortion. By estimates, the respective body provided nearly 53,000 drivers’ licenses annually. In average, even if the illegal fees for each driver’s license makes AMD 60-70 thousand, the shadow incomes in that area would amount to billions of drams annually.

The owner of a vehicle first paid for medical certificate, i.e. the so-called “psycho”. By different calculations, the process implied up to AMD 20,000 illegal fees for each certificate, yet, medical institutions did not have any legal grounding for collect those charges. The changes defined by the Government are radical; the procedures are simplified to a maximum extent. According to the decision of the executive, medical institutions are required to provide all information to the police. Now, it is the responsibility of the police to check, via lists updated monthly, whether the citizen who has applied for a driver’s license is included in the list of persons suffering from illnesses dangerous for driving.

The procedure of receiving a driver’s license is clarified: First, it is possible to substitute old licenses (issued by relevant authorities of the USSR countries by February 1992) with new ones without passing a qualification exam. There will be no exam sheet for driving; clear, feasible requirements will be defined. Documents serving as grounds for granting a driver’s license will be kept for a longer period – 5 years.

The procedure of mandatory attendance of a driving school is abolished. The citizen decides independently whether to use the services of a driving school or not. He may take the examination with a police officer, in the presence of a witness. To ensure transparency, the entire driving test will be videotaped and demonstrated.

This attempt is directed at eliminating the malpractice of “buying” a driver’s license, where a driver pays a kickback and did not attend driving courses and therefore, lacks any knowledge of basic traffic rules. By estimate, in this process, a driver spends nearly AMD 150 thousand: whereas, the lawful payments make 20-25 per cent of that amount.

Passport and visa, without red tape

Passport divisions have been equipped technically; clear information about payments is available for citizens; payments are made electronically.

Some two years ago, the servicing quality of the Passport and Visa Department of the Police caused discontent of any citizen who at least once dealt with that service: corruption, low-quality servicing, red tape and queues. Last year, the Government set a task to create modern servicing centers equipped with advanced technologies, and to ensure that the operations of such services would prevent corruption incidents. Previously, citizens lacked information regarding the amounts and the types of defined charges.

The Nor Nork territorial division was the first swallow in that area. In the renovated, technically equipped subsidiary building, the operations were literary transparent in all respects starting from offices separated by glass partitions ending with the modern payment system. Now, citizens do not have to look for a bank branch to make payments, as they did before. Payments are made on the spot via payment terminals of the Passport Department, i.e. cash is not circulated. Information on the amount and the purpose of payment is available on information boards posted on walls. In addition, citizens may use services of voice portal available in three languages.

Clear rates of charges are defined for receiving a passport in periods ranging from 1 to 15 days. Queues are arranged via an electronic system. All those measures resulted in the improvement of the quality and shortening the time of servicing.

Formerly, a citizen appling for passport, visa or other services was unaware of the duration of the processes. Such unawareness gave birth to potential instances of corruption. At present, execution of the deal at earlier or later period depends on the level of solvency of the applicant. Today, citizens receive complete information on rates of all services proviced by the Department, as well as documents necessary to file and deadlines. Such information is available on boards, through the voice portal or the website. It is worth mentioning that employees of the Department get salary supplements at the account of amounts charged for passport-related paid services: this is another method to combat incidents of extortion.

All subdivisions of the Passport and Visa Department will pass to this new work style.

Licensing by electronic version /Consider – Electronic licensing

Decrease of the level of citizen-public body contacts, easing of procedures of filing licensing documents and receiving licenses for citizens and legal entities: these are the advantages of the license application electronic registering tool introduced by the Government.

It has been a long while since the Government has been offering electronic services to economically active groups of the society: up-to-date, quick, easy, without official circumlocutions. Those services in the first place tend to reduce significantly corruption risks. At first, through introduction of legislative changes, the executive reduced (from 169 to 96) and consolidated the types of licenses. Then, Government created a number of tools at www.e-gov.am electronic governance website. Suppose you have decided to open a drugstore and need a respective activity license: you don’t need to go from pillar to post and knock at different doors, since all you need is an internet connection.

The system introduced in June 2010 as of today has accepted 45 types of licensing applications. An electronic application for licensing may be filled out from home, upon availability of digital version of relevant documents, which significantly eases the job of entrepreneurs from regions. In addition, the loss of any document is excluded. At the www.e-gov.am website, all the windows for uploading of documents are clearly described. An applicant is notified electronically about the satisfaction of his application, and in at least 30 days after receiving the notice, he is deemed licensed. Where the applicant has an electronic signature, he may receive the electronic version of the license as well.

Registration of a business in 15 minutes

The citizen no longer has to knock at several doors to get registered in the register and to collect necessary certificates and documents, since the registration of a legal entity is performed by a “One Stop Shop” (OSS) principle, and in electronic version as well.

To register a business in the State Register of Legal Entities, now the start-up businessman has to visit only one authority. The introduction of the OSS principle relieves the businessman from various red tapes and saves his time. The staff of the State Register performs the entire process of registration. By paying a unified duty, the entrepreneur receives his tax code on the spot and and registers the firm name.

In fact, the process of registration of an enterprise, previously lasting 10-15 days, not takes 15-20 minutes; it is not necessary to visit the State Register; the application for registration can be submitted from home or other premises, where internet connection to the recently deployed electronic registration website is available: www.e-register.am.

Measurement, now a simple function

Procedures of registration of rights and provision of information are being simplified in the Cadastre; the functions of the system are computerized: due these measures, the periods of execution of deals will be reduced; corruptive practices and official circumlocutions will be prevented.

Before, citizens knew clearly that if they had to deal with cadastre bodies, they should be equipped not only with patience, but also with a round sum. The Government intends to reform the operations and the performance of the Cadastre through simplification of the involved processes. Thus, it is necessary to simplify procedures of registration of rights and provision of information, to automate functions performed by the system, to reduce the period of discharging those functions, to eliminate official circumlocutions, and to reduce corruption risks.

For the beginning, the registration of voluntary seized land plots and various properties on them has been eased: so far, such opportunity was available for rural inhabitants only; now, the limitation is removed: in the result, there are neither red tapes, nor corruption risks. Under the new procedure, when providing a uniform certificate on the real estate or state registration of rights after the deals, the need for site examination and measuring will be eliminated. The shadow deals often occur in relation to the so-called “uniform certificate”. To provide the certificate in a short period, a citizen is asked to pay a kickback at the amount varying depending on operational signification of the construction. On the other hand, to validate the document, the citizen also pays at the notary office, which is followed by another expensive process – measurement, and so on.

Under the new procedure, the measurements will be taken only at the time of when a property is registered for the first time, and then, the measurement can be taken in case of any qualitative and quantitative changes, upon the application of the owner.
It is anticipated to establish centralized servicing offices in Yerevan and the regions, where the citizen may apply and receive necessary document without taking into account any circumstance.

It is planned to privatize (partially at the beginning) the services of measurement of private real estates. At their discretion, citizens will choose to use public or private services. In the future, those functions will be performed by public companies only.
In the nearest future, an electronic database of cadastre data will be developed, and the system will be fully computerized/automated.

The number of notaries will increase not at the account of quality

The executive is resolutely determined to introduce qualitative changes in the notary system. The Government has approved the draft law “On making amendments and supplements to the RA Law on Notary”, which stipulates for reduction of the required length of service of lawyers and to provide an opportunity to participate in the notary examinations to individuals, who have 5 years of professional experience, without passing one-year additional service with a functioning notary public. Speaking of that area, Prime Ministry Tigran Sargsyan mentioned that the public was dissatisfied with performance of notary public system, and the Supervisory Service recorded numerous cases of extortions.

“Citizens are not informed of what payments they should make in reality: amounts are taken right away. As it turns out, the charged amount two or three exceeds the defined rates. A range between AMD 3,000 to AMD 5,000 is defined, but they commonly charge AMD 5,000. Therefore, it is necessary to return to rates and revise them, simply eliminate that scale”, said the Prime Minister.

For detailed information, please watch the internet video materials by “Hraparakun” TV program.
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