YEREVAN, November 1, /ARKA/. In an exclusive interview to ARKA news agency, Gagik Gyulbudaghyan, the Managing Partner of Grant Thornton Amyot said apart from Grant Thornton Amyot other large international companies and global networks like KPMG, Ernst&Young, PriceWaterHouse Cooper, Baker Tilly are also represented at the local market.

He said the personnel of these companies have special training courses and all of them apply special programs to conduct their operations.

‘For instance, we have special techniques of auditing, work and control assessment. These techniques are developed and applied globally and therefore, the main benchmark now is to standardize all approaches which is a guarantee of high quality services,’ he said, adding that local companies operating at the market have skilled personnel, but lack appropriate techniques and programs complying with internationally accepted standards. According to him, there is also a third group of auditing and advisory companies, established for clearly cut tasks with a 2-3 member staff.

‘The general assessment is that the local market is quite developed with virtually all leading international companies having their branches and clients. Today we are the leading company and have been competing for a long time with KPMG, Ernst&Young, PriceWaterHouse Cooper, Baker Tilly and BDO.

He said Grant Thornton Amyot has been developing IT auditing and consulting. Recently it has introduced a new tax and legal consulting service through Grant Thornton Legal and Tax company, offering consulting on labor legislation which is very important in the light of recent amendments made to the Labor Code.

“Provision of tax and legal consultation is expanding quite successfully. This prompted us to open last February the Thornton Legal&Tax company. We have drawn a business plan to develop it next year. According to our projects, the amount of its work is set to increase two-three times in 2011 since tax and legal services are in great demand now in Armenia. In this connection we are making some reshuffles in Thornton Legal&Tax company to make it a leading company in 2011 offering tax and legal services in Armenian language.

Our main goal is to win the leading position at the market and we are well equipped to attain this goal - the acclaimed international brand, the support of our international network, learning courses for lawyers and tax advisors of the company, a skilled staff, and a motivation scheme. I think Thornton Legal&Tax will become the leader in 2011,’ he said. -0-