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Armenia has spent around 94.1 billion drams in state procurement in the first half of 2018, against the 70,8 billion drams spent in the same period last year, an advisor to Armenian’s acting PM, economist Artak Manukyan said on Friday, summing up the key tendencies in the system in the indicated period.

Manukyan, who also heads the National Center of Public Policy Research NGO, says some 74,000 procurement processes are set for one year, 9,800 of which are not carried out due to various reasons. Thus, over 13% of the procurement plans were not realized this year.

“To compare, 1.6% of the planned procurement procedures did not take place in the first half of 2017 due to various reasons, particularly due to a lack in participation, which points to a low interest in the procurement system,” the economist said.

According to him, procurement via tendering is the most preferable type, which, however, has 4% share in the sphere. “This points to the fact that the system is not really attractive if purchases are not carried out on the basis of open procedures. Amid a lack of a more transparent procurement opportunity, the corruption risks grow,” he added.

Manukyan next said amendments have been made to some laws regulating the purchase processes involving small, medium-sized businesses and small startups, with a draft law proposing not to demand any documents in case of procurements totalling 10 million drams put into circulation.

The next legal reforms cover the participation in procurement processes in Armenia and the EAEU zone, proposing to allow ‘blacklisted’ people to take part in them.