Thursday, 21 March 2013
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan’s Introductory Speech At Government Sitting: ID-Card As Substitute For Passport
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan - Dear colleagues, before proceeding to the agenda, I will dwell on two questions: As of January 1, 2014, the mandatory pension insurance system is coming into force. Some 270 thousand citizens are supposed to contribute to their personal accounts and should have the right to obtain information about their accounts as to the amounts accrued and on to what extent the State has augmented their money. This means that they can use ID-cards.
Our citizens keep asking us whether the ID-card will allow them access to various services without a passport. There are numerous complaints about the fact that while we have decreed that the passport can be substituted with the ID-card, however, people are often asked to produce a passport in addition to the ID-card, which does not meet the requirements of our legislation.
The question at issue was commented on by Chief of Government Staff David Sargsyan, Deputy Police Chief Arthur Osikyan, Justice Minister Hrayr Tovmasyan, Chairman of the Central Bank Arthur Javadyan), Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Artem Asatryan.
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan: We have been getting alerts from Radio Van-affiliated blogs as to where and in which public entities the citizens are asked to produce a passport in addition their ID-cards.
We are in transition, and all the agencies must learn to work with the cards. We must qualitatively change the situation by the end of the year, and the infrastructures we have should be able to serve the citizens with ID-cards, otherwise we may face problems starting the first day of January, when 270 thousand citizens will carry out transactions with their ID-cards, say when getting notary services.
Whereas the law defines that the citizens should be served with an ID-card, we must comply with requirement of the law. People may have difficulty producing extra certificates which is the same as producing a passport.
The Central Bank is reporting that under the pension reform access to the Depository is only possible through ID-cards for security reasons, which means that we have to create an appropriate environment for our citizens by discussing the matter stage-by-stage and on a monthly basis in order to identify those areas suffering from the problem at issue.
At this point of time, we have the sufficient number of card readers to meet the demand.
We are going to issue a corresponding directive to provide the needed services to our citizens as January 1, 2014.
Economic Performance High In 2013
The second question is as follows: the National Statistics Service has published the figures for January-February, 2013, which evidence that we have quite a high economic performance this year. While appreciating the growth, which is a double-digit one, we can see that there are still problems.
We are happy with the fact that industry continues to demonstrate high performance and we need to maintain the pace throughout this year. But we have serious concerns over industry. We were able to halt the decline for the first time in 2012 boasting a half-percent increase in construction. We recorded an nearly 8% fall in January and February. It seems to be clear that in order to keep up the pace of growth in 2013, we need to implement a State-supported program in this field.
Mr. Davtyan, it is essential that you join the Ministry of Urban Development, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank to hold an important consultation involving all the stakeholders in order to see which way the State could revive the construction sector. Following such an all-out discussion, if necessary, the government will take a decision over its liabilities and the steps to take in this direction.
