Decision to Purchase 3 Toyotas to Escort Alen Simonyan's Car Canceled, 54 Million Expenditure Averted

On April 7, the government had decided to allocate funds for the purchase of three Toyota RAV 4 off-road vehicles to accompany the BMW 750Li official car assigned to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Alen Simonyan.

This decision had caused a significant uproar in the media and social networks. The draft amendments to the law on the state budget of the Republic of Armenia for 2022 proposed reallocating temporarily freed financial resources from the state budget to fund the mentioned vehicles.

According to the draft, 54 million drams were allocated for the purchase of these vehicles through a single-source procurement process. The justification for the project stated that the current accompanying vehicles (TOYOTA LC PRADO 2.71 from 2003 with a mileage of 235,334 km, TOYOTA LC PRADO 4.0GA from 2007 with a mileage of 252,884 km, and NISSAN X-TRAIL 2.01 from 2008 with a mileage of 271,613 km) do not guarantee safe mobility for the Speaker's official BMW 750Li. It was also noted that the transport available in the NA's automotive fleet could not be utilized for escorting the Speaker.

Aravot.am inquired with the press secretary of the Speaker of the National Assembly, Tsovinar Khachatryan, whether those vehicles had already been purchased and how much money was ultimately allocated. She responded that the purchasing process for the Toyota RAV 4 vehicles will not go ahead, and they have decided to refrain from such action.