On June 28, 2016 Transparency International Anticorruption Center (TIAC) with the support of Open Society Foundations- Armenia (OSF-Armenia) held a public roundtable discussion on the draft Law on Public Procurement. Opening remarks were made by Sergey Shahnazaryan, Head of the Internal Public Financial Oversight and Public Procurement Methodology Department of the Ministry of Finance, David Amiryan Deputy Director for Programs of OSF-Armenia and Varuzhan Hoktanyan, Executive Director of TIAC. David Amiryan noted that, there are serious issues in this sector, and as shown by the April war, corruption and more importantly procurement are paid for in blood in our country.

Sergey Shahnazaryan presented the main changes in the legislation that affect public procurement, which are driven by Armenia's international obligations. According to him, Armenia is the only member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) who is a member in both the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Public Procurement Agreement and the EEU, both of which dictate certain obligations even though they are quite different from one another. “Armenia is the EEU’s only member who is also in membership with WTO’s Public Procurement Agreement, and the first nation to “harmonize” its laws in accordance to the EEU’s demands. Therefore, it can be said that we are going to have a sort of “non-typical,” model format of laws, which later on in my opinion other nations will adopt,” said Shahnazaryan.

The opening remarks were followed by a question and answer session and discussion. Participants presented their recommendations. TIAC anti-corruption center’s expert Artak Manukyan was in agreement with the officials from the Ministry of Finance, saying that, often times the procurement specialist blames the inadequate knowledge of this issue on procurement legislation. However, Manukyan believes that the quality of the Finance Ministry’s retraining and educational programs does not meet the demands.