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‘Haykakan Zhamanak’ daily writes citing its sources that more and more businessmen and private persons prefer that goods they import from third countries into Armenia be cleared not at the Armenian border, but in Belarus or Russia.

“When goods are cleared at the Armenian border, customs officials often do not take into account an invoice for those goods and apply a higher ‘control’ price, while customs officials in Belarus take an invoice as a basis.

As a result, the Armenian state budget suffers considerable losses in terms of VAT collection as VAT collected on goods at the Armenian border is immediately transferred to the state budget. In case of customs clearance in Belarus and Russia, businessmen later pay less VAT to the state budget of Armenia,” the paper says.