On June 8, 2010 CRRC-Armenia, in cooperation with the Department of Economics of the Yerevan State University and the Armenian International Policy Research Group hosted a lecture entitled “Better Regulation and Less Red Tape Drive Economic Development”. The lecture was conducted by Mr. Pekka Lindroos, the Resident Twinning Advisor of the Regulatory Management/Standard Cost Model (SCM) Project.

The lecture followed by a questions-answer session was designed for and attended by scholars from economic and law departments, representatives of Ministry of Education and Science, ICIRLD and others interested in Public Administration. Mr. Lindroos presented the SCM model project the main target of which is transfer of practical experience from EU member state administration to build the capacity in the Armenian administration.

According to the lecturer the SCM is a key method in Better Regulation policy aiming at reduction of administrative burdens for enterprises. The method measures the cost in a standardized way enabling international comparisons and identification of areas for systematic administrative simplification. SCM based calculations for EU show that administrative burden might be reduced by 33 percent or about 124 billion annually. For implementation of the Standard Cost Model in our country (as in any other) three main steps should be undertaken: 1) breaking down regulation into manageable components that can be measured, 2) measuring administrative burden, and 3) simplifying regulation. The strength of the SCM method is the fact that it is highly action-orientated and simplification work is its natural extension. Mr. Lindroos presented the analysis and examples of EU members, like Netherlands, Latvia and Finland. He also introduced the brief analysis of administrative burden in Armenian clothing industry; it includes 28 types of reporting obligations. As the Government of Armenia is highly interested in improving regulatory management, the SCM will be shortly employed for the whole Armenian economy.

For more details, please use this link to download the presentation.

Note: The Twinning is an EU program to provide Pre-Accession Assistance to the candidate countries in their efforts to strengthen their administrative and institutional capacity in preparation for membership of the European Union. The Regulatory Management/SCM Project is implemented by Finnish Institute of Public Management, and the counterpart of the project is the Ministry of Economy of Armenia.