Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

The Freedom of Information Center, thanks to requests to receive information, made subject to criticism the NGOs that have received grants from the RA President’s Budget and avoided public accountability, thus returning 80 million AMD to the State Budget.

On March 20, 2013 the Freedom of Information Center had applied to the RA Government with a written request to receive information and had received information about the funding provided to NGOs from the RA State Budget in 2010-2012 (see: http://givemeinfo.am/hy/case/1164/). In response, the RA Ministry of Finance had informed FOICA that during 2010-2013, 500 million AMD was allocated from the State Budget for funding the NGOs, of which 31 NGOs have received 499 million 818 thousand AMD during these 3 years. Moreover, some of them were financed during two consecutive years, in 2011 and 2012 (for example, “Yeritasardneri Yerkir” (“The Nation of the Young”) and “Arbanyak” (“Satellite”) NGOs).

FOICA published the received information (see the respective article published 18.04.2013 at: http://foi.am/en/articles/item/1212/), which was followed by investigations by different media on the activities of NGOs having received state funding. There were publications about what particular organizations have received such large sums of money from the RA State Budget, to what extent those organizations and the programs accomplished by them are publically accessible, and to what extent the activities of those organizations are transparent.

It became clear that the public is completely uninformed about the organizations that have received grant money from the RA President's Staff. Some of these organizations even don’t have websites. Moreover, it appears to be impossible to find any contact data.

As a result, the NGOs having received grants from the RA President’s Staff transferred most of the amount of the money received during 2013, about 89 million AMD, back to the State Budget to be allocated to the farmers in Armavir marz who suffered from this year's hail storm (see: http://www.tert.am/en/news/2013/07/05/vigen-sargsyan/?sw/?sw).