A Cabinet meeting was held today, chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Before discussing the agenda, the Prime Minister touched upon the steps implemented as aprt of the ongoing campaign against the shadow economy. “You may know that ever since the formation of our government, we have been actively fighting against corruption, abuses and the shadow economy. We have summarized the data and stated that as of July 1, owing to the criminal proceedings initiated by law enforcement agencies, fiscal damage or unpaid tax liabilities in the amount of AMD 20, 622 million has been calculated and credited to the State budget, which must be settled. This makes about 42 million dollars. It is quite an important indicator, and I am convinced that we must continue endeavoring in this direction. This is actually what we did over the past one and a half months.

There are publications in the mass media that the recovered amount is not reflected in the budget, but there is nothing strange about it, and now I will ask Head of State Revenue Committee Mr. Ananyan to elaborate on the reason behind the fact that only 800 million drams have so far been restored and settled,” Nikol Pashinyan said.

By the decision of the Government of the Republic of Armenia, Hayk Grigoryan was appointed to serve as Investigative Committee Chairman. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan congratulated Hayk Grigoryan on his appointment to this important post, stressing that the reinstatement of legality, the fight against corruption and crime in Armenia are top priorities. “When addressing all these issues, human rights and the rule of law should not be harmed in any way. In the fight against corruption, we must fully ensure the rule of law and rule out the possibility of any other interpretation of the activities of law enforcement agencies. I hope that under your leadership the Investigative Committee will operate according to this very logic,” Nikol Pashinyan pointed out.

The meeting approved the Government’s proposal concerning the bill “On amending the Tax Code of the Republic of Armenia.” It was suggested to refrain from passage of the draft law of the Republic of Armenia “On significant reduction in State budget revenues or increase in expenditures.” The proposed bill provides for reducing the currently applicable income tax rates to 20 percent for incomes under 500,000 drams a month, and 25 percent - for incomes over 500,000 drams, respectively.

Touching upon the aforementioned draft laws, the Premier said that the Government is going to make significant changes to the Tax Code in a bid to improve the economic and investment environment. “We will have to work on the amendments until this fall, and it would be nice to have an influx of proposals. The amendments should be developed with the participation of all stakeholders in order to have a series of rational and mutually complementary proposals. Last Saturday, a very serious discussion was held on this topic at the Central Bank’s Research and Development Center in Dilijan.

We stated that we should go for changes with heart and courage. In the end, we came to the right conclusion that we need not make sporadic changes to the Tax Code; instead we should implement serious studies and comprehensive work in order to proceed to fundamental transformations. The package needs to be sent to the National Assembly by this fall, because the business community is looking forward to the proposed amendments,” Nikol Pashinyan concluded.

A number of other legislative initiatives were discussed during the meeting.