A working group comprised of government agencies and NGO’s tasked with developing an anti-corruption strategy for Armenia convened its first meeting today in Yerevan.

Armenian Deputy Minister of Justice Karen Karapetyan, who chairs the group, briefly outlined the government’s vision to battle corruption in the country.

The working group was formed in accordance with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's recommendation issued at the meeting of the Anti-Corruption Policy Council held on February 11.

While Pashinyan has, on several occasions, claimed that largescale corruption has been eliminated, he said the country’s three-point drop in the 2022 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index is unacceptable and alarming.

“Recently, we have uncovered many shocking corruption cases in the food safety inspection, in the customs service, in one of the administrative districts of the Yerevan Municipality, in the government, and so on. Our task is to prevent corruption. That is why the Corruption Prevention Commission was created in Armenia," Pashinyan said.

The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived, according to experts and businesspeople, levels of public sector corruption on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Armenia, with a score of 46/100, ranked 63rd in the 180 countries included in the CPI. The country’s score decreased by three since 2021.