At today’s session of the government, Deputy Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Bagrat Badalyan presented a project, which envisages adding a line of light passenger cars to the list of products allowed for release under the customs procedure “Recycling for Domestic Consumption”.
He said that the mentioned customs procedure will enable the vehicles with right-hand steering system to be imported to Armenia without re-equipment and to replace the right-hand steering system with the left-hand steering system.
“Then, after customs clearance, register them in the RA police and use them freely in the RA territory,” he said.
Nikol Pashinyan mentioned that they had banned the import of right-hand drive cars in general and it turned out that many citizens were brought and changed the right-hand drive to the left-hand drive in the territory of Georgia.
“But they can bring it under the temporary import regime, change the steering adjustment, after which it will be recorded and allowed to operate. We must record that during that time they will not have the opportunity to exploit and in case of exploitation, the problem of fines will be opened. Let’s agree that we are moving forward, but we hope there won’t be an attempt at abuse,” said Pashinyan.
Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan said that he thinks that it is necessary to discuss, after all, whether they agree that modified cars should be continuously imported and operated in Armenia.
Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan also said that it is necessary to understand what is happening.
“I completely agree with Mr. Avinyan. We essentially generate volumes of movable property that are potential accident targets in Armenia. If we don’t do the certification, it will be found that the reason for the large number of accidents is that the steering wheel was moved in an unprofessional way,” said Grigoryan.
Tigran Avinyan mentioned that a new deadline should be set, after which right-hand drive vehicles cannot be operated at all.
“Let’s agree that this batch will also leave and we will block the road for this type of vehicles,” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said.
SRC Chairman Davit Ananyan also said that at the end of last year they had a similar discussion and said, “We do this and we don’t.”
“I mean, now they ask a simple and primitive question: they say, Georgian craftsman makes so much money, why don’t you let our craftsman work?” “Now we have made a half-baked decision and transferred the money from Armenia to another country, we made a bad decision,” said the Prime Minister.
He urged to decide a specific date from when the import of cars with a changed steering wheel will be banned and not to bring a new initiative.
“It should be done quickly,” said Pashinyan.
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