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

The Government decided to provide USD 133,200.0 to Levon Aronyan in preparation for the World Chess Championship in 2019. Gabriel Ghazaryan, acting Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs, noted that the need to adopt the decision was conditioned by the fact that the three-time World Chess Olympiad champion, the double winner of the World Cup and the fourth highest-ranked chess player in the world Levon Aronyan is getting ready for the World Champion title struggle.

Nikol Pashinyan wanted to know whether such allocations had ever been made from the State budget in the past. The Minister advised that this is the first time an Armenian athlete has been provided money from the State budget. The Premier emphasized the importance of such decisions and stated, in part: “Let us note that normally issues like this used to be solved the following way: either a phone call ought to be made or a petition filed in order to provide funding to that effect. I think it was a bad scheme, because it implied some relationship, kinship, privileges, commitments, and so on. I believe that the State is the one to finance any sporting mission of nationwide importance. Let those having funded this kind of activity pay taxes. In the meantime, the State will provide the needed amount on their behalf.

Why do I consider it a state mission and support Levon Aronian? First of all, he boasts unprecedented services before the Republic of Armenia. Second, especially in the new situation, I feel that our main task is to make Armenian citizens believe in their strengths and opportunities. Levon Aronyan, Henrik Mkhitaryan, Arthur Alexanyan and other Armenian athletes should set an example in this field so that our youth could be brought up in the same spirit.”

The Government approved the Business Environment Improvement Action Plan for 2019. The program is expected to ensure the continuity of reforms undertaken by the Government to improve the business and investment environment. First of all it is expected to alleviate the administrative and financial burden in the areas where we have had great improvement as compared to other countries. At the same time, it should ensure the development of those sectors that have been successful in recent years. The planned activities will reduce the scope of administrative interaction with central and local authorities, curb corruption risks, and increase transparency in service providers’ activities.

With another decision, the Government approved the draft National Assembly resolution “On Approving the Annual Report of the State Budget of the Republic of Armenia for 2018,” which specifically states that the annual revenue is 1,341,690,590.9 thousand drams, expenditures - 1,447,083,011.5 thousand drams, with the budget deficit standing at 105,392,420.6 thousand drams.

In this connection, Nikol Pashinyan noted, “As we are in for a detailed discussion in the NA and within the standing committees and to give up the bad tradition, I suggest that the National Security Service Director, the Chief of Police, the Mayor of Yerevan and the Marz Governors should attend the National Assembly debates in order to have more substantiated discussion in the National Assembly.”

The Government passed three decisions approving university admission vacancies for the 2019-2020 Academic Year. Nikol Pashinyan emphasized in this connection that the Government’s program and strategy should serve as a guideline for allocating seats for this academic year. The Head of Government went on to underscore that next year the same decision should feature other analytics, completely different base data and other targets.

347, 522 thousand drams will be allocated from the Reserve Fund to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure the activities of Armenia’s diplomatic services accredited in foreign countries. The reference note says that formerly a number of appointments to the post of heads of diplomatic missions abroad were made not from the MFA system. Some of them refused their salaries and other expenses. Due to this, the Foreign Ministry’s funding bids did not include the aforementioned expenses and no money was allocated from the budget to this end. In order to comply with the policy of increasing our diplomatic missions’ efficiency that the Government adopted in May, 2018, the heads of Armenian diplomatic missions abroad are represented by exercising diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the need has arisen to fund the above expenses from the State budget of the Republic of Armenia.

With reference to this question, Nikol Pashinyan said, “We have to admit that we faced rather a strange situation as there appeared to be “private” embassies run by non-diplomats. That is, there were embassies with everything belonging to specific individuals who acted on behalf of the State and there was no public funding. This is, in fact, a very strange situation, which can give rise to different interpretations, no matter the ambassador’s personality. I am convinced that the time has come to set it high on our policy agenda.”