06.04.2020

The Business reports the Damage caused by the Coronavirus

The BizProtect website has received notices related to the restrictions imposed by the RA Commandant due to the state of emergency declared by the new Covid-19 coronavirus.

On 24 March, 2020, the RA Commandant/Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan adopted Resolution No. 14, which imposed temporary restrictions on different types of economic activity in the entire territory of the Republic of Armenia, due to the legal regime of the state of emergency. These restrictions were later supplemented by other decisions.

As a result of these restrictions, a number of businesses have suffered losses and submitted the following reports:

"In these difficult conditions (related to the coronavirus), "Spyur" Information System continues to provide information to the population through its 6 directories and provide services to its client organizations. However, the income of the "Spyur" is sharply declining, about 10 times today, as the client organizations of "Spyur" do not have money to pay. The number of sick in the country at the moment is about 0.01%, and the decline in the economy, following the example of the "Spyur", is about 10 times. It turns out that the economic catastrophe will be much bigger than the health one. I believe organizations need to get back to work, strictly following the rules of hygiene.”

The alarm was presented by the founding director of "Spyur" LLC, Ashot Grigoryan.

The expert team of BizProtect submitted a note on the first report to the office of the RA Commandant Tigran Avinyan.

"A misfortune has occurred. My whole hope was that I would sell the flowers, but because of the coronavirus, everything was lost. I had to pay my 2,000,000 AMD loans. That was my whole investment."

Khachik Sardaryan had presented the alarm. The expert team of the BizProtect provided advice to the whistleblower on this report, in particular, the table provided by the decision N 27 of the RA Commandant was presented. Namely the paragraph regarding the temporary restrictions on the types of economic activity applied in the whole territory of the Republic of Armenia, in particular the following point of the paragraph: "Retail of Flowers, plants, seeds, fertilizers, pets, food for pets in special stores."However, it turned out that the whistleblower was not able to sell flowers, as the he was selling flowers at the "Flower Market" wholesale center, as a result of which he suffered a loss of about two million AMD. A note on this announcement was submitted to the office of the RA Commandant Tigran Avinyan.

"We cannot pay loans because of the work stoppage, I deal with retail trade, what solution will you advice, I am an individual entrepreneur."

The alert is anonymous. The expert team of the BizProtect established connested on the platform with the whistleblower and presented the decision N-412-L on the eighth program of neutralization of the economic consequences of the coronavirus approved by the Government of the Republic of Armenia. In particular, it was presented that the purpose of the event is to support the employees and private entrepreneurs (hereinafter referred to as Beneficiaries) employees in the affected sectors of the private sector (hereinafter referred to as the affected sector) that hav suffered losses due to the spread of coronavirus.

In the meaning of this decision the following types of activities are considered as affected areas:

1. Hotel and hostel services,

2. Public catering services,

3. Tourism services,

4. Hairdressing and beauty salon services,

5. Retail services, including shopping activities at the shopping center or at the place of sale.

In the meaning of this event, the retail services within which (regardless of size or proportion) are food, tobacco, drugs or alcohol are sold are not considered to be the affected sector. It was presented that the support is provided as lump sum in case of a sole proprietor, in the amount of 10% of the turnover of the 4th quarter of 2019, but not more than twice the minimum wage, based on the application submitted electronically by the Beneficiary through online.ssa.am website, after 10 April of this year.

The BizProtect.am website operated by the Armenian Lawyers’ Association (ALA) is a whistleblowing platform targeted at corruption and any other issues, risks and issues that
impede business activity. This site also provides opportunity for anonymous alerts.