Here at the Ministry of Economy we have to look out for and defend businessmen’s interests in the legislation process, so that Armenia would have an attractive, transparent and competitive business environment and that the entrepreneurs can concentrate on their businesses and not waste their time and money on unnecessary bureaucracy.
And this is namely where regulatory impact assessment or RIA comes in. The task of the RIA team of the Ministry of Economy is to evaluate all new legislation that may influence small and medium enterprises and competition and ascertain whether they might have a positive or negative impact in those fields.
So, how is it done exactly? All new laws and decrees that may have any influence on small and medium enterprises or competition are sent to the Ministry of Economy’s special assessment team for an evaluation.
The RIA team first assesses whether the new legislation will actually have any impact on SMEs or competition after implemented. If it turns out that it will influence those areas, the team evaluates what type of influence the new piece of legislation will have. For instance, they will evaluate if it may result in additional costs for businessmen, create them additional reporting obligation, make it more difficult to start or close a business, etc.
If then it turns out as a result of the assessment that the new law actually will have a negative influence on those areas of business, the team sends the law back to the institution that had drafted it with their concrete suggestions on how to overcome the shortcomings and improve the law.
Here is just one concrete example from the work of RIA team. Some time ago a new law on tourism industry was sent in for assessment. The analysis showed that if the law was implemented in such a way as proposed, it would cost tourism compaes an additional amount of almost 7 million AMD for licenses and insurance for their guides and transportation in the future. Obviously, such result will have negative impact on the entire tourism industry and decrease its competitiveness. So, concrete suggestions were made by the RIA team to change certain points of the proposed law.
So, in short – the RIA team analyses carefully all new laws and decrees that may have an impact on small and medium business or competition and if the possible impact is negative, they give suggestions on how to make the law better. In other words, they see that the businessmen’s interests are not harmed in the process of legislation by causing them more bureaucracy or costs.
Better regulation is a smart regulation – it helps to save money, reduces red tape and helps our economy. You can find more information about RIA and our RIA team in the following pages.
