Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a consultation with the heads of public administration bodies to discuss issues related to the allocation of extra budgetary funds.

Addressing the meeting, the Prime Minister stated, in part: “I have already declared that this year we expect to have an excess of 62 billion drams in the revenue side of the State budget; more precisely, we are not expecting, but we are sure to exceed the planned receipts by at least 62 billion drams this year, and therefore, we need to discuss how to allocate the extra budgetary funds.

In essence, we have already made a decision on three issues. 7 billion drams will be funneled toward road construction program. We have agreed that the salaries of the military will increase as of this July 1. 6.8 billion drams will be made available to this end for the next half-year. We need to raise teachers’ salaries and this will require 3.5 billion drams this year. Now, we have to make a decision about the remaining funds. Some 45 billion drams are at stake, about which we have to make the right spending decision.

What do I mean by saying the right decision? According to the data of the first quarter of this year, we have had 7.1% growth in gross domestic product. I want to emphasize that this is not an indicator of economic activity, but the actual increase in the gross domestic product. This is a very encouraging indicator, which gives us hope that if we act right, we can achieve such indicators as will allow us to state that the economic revolution has started.

Why is it important? Economists, our political team members and government representatives advise us to try to spend these amounts in a way that will catalyze and trigger further growth. As such, capital expenditure is to come first as a source of economic incentives. Thus, this is really a very serious and delicate issue, and we should be able to make the right decision because it weighs heavily on our economic development.”

Then, the heads of public administration bodies came up with a number of proposals and introduced new investment projects that were discussed during the exchange of views that followed.

Prime Minister Pashinyan told the stakeholders to follow up the discussion within the shortest possible timeframes in order to assess the effectiveness of the proposed projects. The Head of Government emphasized that resources should be spent in a way to ensure economic effect.