YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. The government of Armenia approved today the 2020 state budget draft.

On this occasion Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed his message, stating that Armenia is currently facing difficult challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic, social and security consequences of the 44-Day War are not overcome yet.

Pashinyan said the snap parliamentary elections this year helped to solve the domestic political crisis and created quite firm grounds for the Armenian people’s aspiration to look to the future.

“The government’s action plan must create grounds for the peaceful, stable and inclusive development of Armenia in the medium-run”, Pashinyan said. “Our goals, which are reflected in the 2020 budget and also in the action plan, are ambitious and realistic. We understand that their implementation requires not only economic measures by the government, but also public and cultural reforms. We first of all attach importance to raising the efficiency of the public administration system, as well as changing and developing the working culture. The most important, probably, is the planning and implementation culture, the implementation processes of programs, the non-fulfillment of which leads to underperformance of capital expenditures and slows down the implementation of the government’s goals, thus obstructing also the economic growth. In this regard the capacity development of the private sector plays a key role, and the government’s efforts for this goal have started to give results, in the person of those companies which are making investments in the state capital construction field for being competitive, thus seeking to implement these projects on time and in a high quality. The government plans to continue its policy of promoting investments in this field, applying three main tools for this: the first is the transparency of state procurement system, the second is the increase of volumes of tenders and the third are the new legislative initiatives aimed at facilitating the relations with reliable companies”.

According to Pashinyan, the next key task is the development of analytical capacities, which will allow to raise the efficiency of expenditures, investments, address the social programs, which is one of the most important issues. “As a result the citizens’ trust will be raised that their taxes are spent maximally effectively and in a targeted way. The citizens of Armenia must feel every day the impact of the government’s actions on their life. One of the key components of this is the engagement of the broad public circles into various stages of formation and performance of the budget, over which steps have already been taken in the past three years, and great attention would be paid also in the future”, PM Pashinyan said, adding that 2020 budget is based on three main priorities – reform of the security system, infrastructure development and upgrading of education and science.

“We are going to pay a great focus on ensuring security, without which it would be impossible to implement the long-term development goals. In this sense, not only the upgrading of defense capacities of the Army, but also the formation of a favorable external environment around Armenia, the consistent implementation of the agenda on opening a peaceful development era for Armenia, Artsakh and the region are important. In this sense the re-opening and development of regional economic and transportation infrastructure is also important, which can qualitatively change the content and structure of Armenia’s economy, be an additional boost for the domestic infrastructure development, ensure a long-term inclusive economic growth, by creating equal conditions for the citizens of Armenia in order to be engaged in economic activity, significantly raise our country’s attractiveness for foreign direct investments. Therefore, the access to education, inclusive development and content reforms is our long-term priority. Our goal is to make person’s education a lifestyle, this is the only way of being a competitive nation and an individual in the modern world”, the PM stated.

According to him, science and technology development is the logical continuation of this process, and here the government is already introducing new funding formulas. However, he notes that all the problems cannot be solved by one budget.

“In the budget of 2022 we have tried to cautiously balance the priorities of the government and at the same time ensure the manageability of different types of fiscal risks. We set our strategic goals and their implementation priorities in a way that the implementation of each of them creates grounds for the effective implementation of the others. We are confident that the government’s action plan will have a successful implementation to ensure the security, welfare and dignified life of the Armenian citizens”, Nikol Pashinyan said.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan