The Armenian market has never faced
such a crisis before, President of the Union of Small Enterprises of Armenia
Stepan Aslanyan told journalists on Wednesday.
He said that the first blow on small business was the
opening of big supermarkets. "As far as we know, over 10,000 small shops
have been closed all over Armenia over the last two years," Aslanyan said.
The next blow, according to him, was depreciating AMD
and the inability of businessmen to find a solution to this problem.
Aslanyan said that the Armenian Government neglects
small business. "They keep
imposing heavy taxes on small enterprises. We have sent them lots of proposals
on how to review the tax laws and to encourage small businessmen to develop. One
of them was a bill suggesting 1% tax on documentary operations and 3.5% tax on
non-documentary operations. But the Government has not reacted to it so
far," Aslanyan said.
He noted that small enterprises have just 1% in tax
revenues, so, they may well be exempted from taxes for some time.
"Today the whole society is puzzled,"
Aslanyan said, noting that in January 2015 his Union will organize actions to
save small business.