Thursday, 21 November 2013
Customs Union Roadmap Being Drawn Up
A Cabinet sitting was held today, chaired by Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.
Opening the meeting, the Prime Minister addressed the audience: “Two days ago, the Presidents of four countries had a working group established in the Eurasian Commission in Moscow to discuss Armenia’s accession to the Customs Union and Common Economic Space. The working group includes professionals from Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and Eurasian Economic Commission. The Working Group is supposed to determine the exact amount of work that we have to do to implement this process, and also it has to draft a road map. That is why all the departments will have to carry out a large amount of work. Of course, our work accounts for the period of time to carry out all these activities. Since the Working Group’s first meeting is due this December 5, we should be ready to submit per-sector action plans, our capabilities and in what period of time we can accomplish this process in order to meet the deadline of making a roadmap and to submit it to the Presidents’ approval. This is our nearest task in the accession to Customs Union. When in St. Petersburg, I had a meeting with the Prime Ministers of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus and, naturally, we discussed issues concerning Armenia’s accession to the Customs Union. All of the three Premiers promised to support us, so that we can properly prepare these documents and implement the needed actions.”
After the agenda had been approved, the Executive started discussing the first item. The government approved a set of draft amendments to the Law on Advertising and the Code of Administrative Offences in order to ban the promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products.
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan observed that there is no reaction on the part of the NGOs to the subject in question. While tobacco use is a serious problem, statistics show that thousands of people die from it every year. According to the head of government, NGOs efforts seem to be inadequate in this matter. “It is a little bit surprising that our environmentalists have been voicing various concerns whole days and nights, while the risks here are not comparable: people die from smoking every day. But for some reason, people seem to be more tolerant to this disease than any other environmental phenomenon. Let us keep focus on the problem trying to create the needed atmosphere in society in support of this issue.”
The meeting next amended a previous government decree in order to smooth burden of gas price for vulnerable families. Under this decision, the government will continue to partially offset the applicable tariffs for those households entitled to family allowance (low income families) from April 1, 2013 to July 6 2013.
The government agreed to the proposal of signing a cooperation agreement in the field of nuclear safety between the Governments of the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation.
In conclusion, the government decided to substitute the working Monday of December 30, 2013 with the Saturday of December 28, 2013. The second point of the decision provides as follows: the working days of January 27, April 21, May 2, July 28, August 18 and September 15, 2014 will be moved to February 1, April 26, May 31, August 2, August 23 and September 20, 2014 respectively.
