YEREVAN, AUGUST 18, ARMENPRESS. The Cabinet approved a bill on regulating street trade that will enable authorities to confiscate the products sold on the street by unlicensed vendors in addition to the presently used penalties.

The bill was mainly developed by Yerevan City Hall.

Mayor Hrachya Sargsyan said at the Cabinet meeting that during the past two years they’ve conducted studies and concluded that the existing levers are insufficient to tackle street trade and in most cases they are even unable to charge the penalties from fined vendors.

“In 90% of cases these vendors don’t have any property or assets registered by their name, and they end up getting bankrupt. As such, we see the solution of this problem through confiscating the products of illegal street vendors, and we believe that we will give a final solution to this problem. We regularly take action in Yerevan but just hours later everything is repeating, and we are sure that with the adoption of this law we will solve this problem,” the Mayor said.

The mayor said the street vendors are selling toys, food, even animals with unknown safety measures.

PM Pashinyan attached importance to the establishment of institutions and standards in the country.

“Let’s not go for compromise. I am not saying take the scythe and shut everything down, but safety regulations must be maintained. We must take the path of having clear standards in the country because compromise with low-quality reality will inevitably lead to disaster,” Pashinyan said.

He mentioned that looking back at the 2020 war a question arises as to why for so long they’d agreed to compromise. “Knowing that certain processes exist in our military, we said, well let’s not do anything in the military, it’s a matter of security, and then the compromise blew up on our heads. Every time our compromise blew up on our head,” the PM said.