In early 2021, the Armenian government adopted amendments to the decision on the procedure of allocating state grants and subsidies, aimed at ensuring better transparency and accountability of the process. Transparency International Anticorruption Center (TIAC) took active part in the discussions on the amendments and provided a number of recommendations based on the findings from CSO Meter 2019 report and outcomes of several discussions with CSOs. As a result, most of TIAC’s recommendation were included in the amended procedure, while the recommendation on introducing an electronic platform on state grants, which would allow online submission of project proposals and timely publication of information on grant projects in one place, was taken into consideration by the Ministry of Finance to be addressed further.
In April 2021, the Ministry of Finance initiated online discussions on additional grant-related documentation such as sample grant announcement and call for proposals, contract template, and report forms. After the meeting, the Ministry considered the suggestions of TIAC and other CSOs, and finalized and standardized the relevant documents, as well as developed guidelines on state grant provision through the electronic platform. All these documents were approved in August 2021 by the order of the Minister of Finance.
According to this order, starting September 2021, the implementation of state grant competitions, conclusion and registration of grant contracts, and acceptance of the contract deliverables must be carried out through the ARMEPS and ARMEPS/PPCM electronic systems. The ARMEPS – Armenian Electronic Procurement System – was designed back in 2009 as an electronic platform for public procurement tenders and contracting. PPCM is its subsystem for Procurement Plan and Contracts Management. Since 2012, the public procurement tenders in Armenia are done in electronic format, with subsequent publication of contracts on the ARMEPS platform. The e-procurement system helps the Ministry of Finance to monitor the compliance of the procurement tender process with the legislation, ensures the availability and exchange of necessary information during the process, including information on the tender results, thus contributing to transparent public procurement and mitigation of related corruption risks.
Currently, the granting procedure was added in the e-procurement system as a type of procurement, and it is possible to search for information on competition results, signed grant contracts and acceptance acts through applying the relevant filters. However, we identified several challenges:
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CSOs and others face difficulty in searching for state grant-related information, due to a lack of specific subsection, page or heading on the ARMEPS or PPCM platforms.
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CSOs still need to check the grant announcements in the different websites of state agencies as before, since there is no section on the website for this.
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CSOs cannot plan their funding sources, due to the lack of information on upcoming grant competitions and amount available for each cycle of grants. Namely, the section on “procurement plans” reflects the total annual amounts allocated for grants (including grants to state organisations) in state bodies’ budget.
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Generally, the platform is not user-friendly for CSOs as it was designed primarily for procurement tenders. For example, to register on the platform, which is necessary to submit proposals, the CSOs need to click the option of “Register as a Supplier” and submit their “bids”.
Overall, the usage of the electronic platform for grant competition can be considered as a step forward, as it allows submission of grant proposals online, without a need to deliver proposal package in hard copy, which was especially problematic for regional organisations. It also provides more transparency of grant contracts and acceptance reports due to the mandatory publication of these documents in the portal. However, there is a need for the Ministry to:
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Improve the technical features of the e-procurement portals and adapt it to the specific characteristics of grant competitions to make it more user-friendly for CSOs.
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Allocate a special module for grant competition announcements and documentation as a most convenient solution and support to CSOs to navigate the overwhelming information on public procurement bids, documents, and terminology.
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Distinguish between the grants allocated for CSOs and state organisations to facilitate search of information and monitoring of grant allocation process.
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Finally, the Ministry of Finance and the government should implement awareness raising and provide guidelines for CSOs on how to use the platform to find and apply to grant competitions.
Such steps will increase the effectiveness of the platform and the public trust towards the state grant allocation process.