YEREVAN, AUGUST 11, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the Cabinet meeting that road construction companies have problems in completing government contracts. The PM said the problem is related to the state procurement system.

“When we were discussing previously the reforms of the procurement system , an idea was voiced to take into account the overload of road construction companies in the given phase as a factor. Unfortunately, in some parts we see a situation where the companies are vigorously taking part in tenders, winning the contracts, and then having problems in completing the government orders within the deadlines. Of course, if they fail to meet the deadlines, we have mechanisms, blacklisting, bank guarantees, penalties, but we aren’t consoled by this. We don’t need to pull the bank guarantee or impose penalties, we need the road,” the PM said, adding that there is a construction boom in Armenia now and therefore construction companies are seriously overloaded.

Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Gnel Sanosyan said they are trying to make several changes in the procurement system.

He said the companies bidding the lowest must be subjected to higher supervision to understand at what expense they are able to make quality work at such low prices. “The other problem is that the capacity of our country’s construction companies doesn’t meet what the government wants to do. Last year, 33 billion drams was allocated for reconstruction, but our construction companies were able to carry out only 21 billion drams of work. This year, we’ve already allocated 60 billion, but prior to doing so we’ve notified them that we are building 500 kilometers of roads and this implies that construction companies must increase their capacities all the time,’ Sanosyan said.