Wednesday, 3 July 2013
Armen Ashotyan: “We accepted most of Audit Chamber’s findings”
Commenting on the Audit Chamber’s findings at a GPC-hosted news conference, Education and Science Minister Armen Ashotyan stressed that his Ministry was among the most inspected agencies in 2012. The Chamber has checked 4 large-scale projects: high schools and general schools’ Internet accessibility, the World Bank-supported Education Quality and Harmonization credit facility and the EU budget support program.
“We accepted most of the Audit Chamber’s findings, which we found quite useful. Nevertheless, we had some objections that were submitted to the Audit Chamber shortly after the receipt of the report. We also had the opportunity to address the problem at hand through mass media, as well as from the podium of the National Assembly."
Stressing that the problems were of financial, administrative, procedural and methodological nature, Armen Ashotyan considered it inappropriate to involve the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Science. Evoking the above 4 projects, the speaker said 4 building projects - colleges - had been checked under the EU-financed program exposing some irregularities.
“The overall volume of irregularities did not exceed 1.5-2 per cent of the estimated cost. 3 of 4 contractors concurred with the Audit Chamber’s findings and subsequently reimbursed the money to the State budget," Armen Ashotyan concluded.
