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

Before discussing the agenda, the government reviewed the situation with the COVID-19 in Armenia. The Government approved the sixth, seventh and eighth activities aimed at neutralizing the adverse impact of the novel coronavirus. The proposed measures seek to assist those citizens facing social problems due to the labor market fluctuations caused by the spread of the coronavirus.

The beneficiaries of the sixth package are the natural persons (citizens of the Republic of Armenia) who were bound by employment relations on the basis of an employment contract or individual legal act with private employers in the period from January 1 to March 13, 2020, where the gap between two consecutive contracts did not exceed 3 business days in the period from January 1 to March 13), but were dismissed in the period from March 13 to March 30, 2020. They will be provided a lump-sum amount equivalent to the minimum monthly salary.

The seventh package targets those pregnant women who were not employed as of March 30 and whose husbands lost their job in the period from March 13 to March 30, 2020. The beneficiaries shall be supported at the rate of AMD 100,000.

The purpose of the eighth package is meant to assist those hired workers and self-employed engaged in hotel businesses, public catering and tourism services, hairdressing and beauty salons, retail services, including shopping and sales activities. The program shall not cover those retailers that sell (regardless of size and proportion) food and / or tobacco and / or medicines and / or alcoholic beverages.

Summing up the meeting, Nikol Pashinyan said: “Dear colleagues, I would like to state that we have approved 8 anti-crisis measures during the past week, 4 of which have an economic bias and the remaining 4 are of social importance. We will monitor the implementation of these programs in order to understand which ones are effective and which are not that effective. I mean that the Government will continue to work on its anti-crisis initiatives, and we will probably have new ideas in the near future. Should the proposed mechanisms prove to be effective, we will finalize them for future application. If anyone of these tools turns out to be ineffective and does not reach the recipient, we may substitute it with other tools. Or, if it turns out that there are new tools available, we will apply them, too. We have decided to allocate some 25 billion drams in economic assistance, 25 billion drams for social assistance and 80 billion drams under economic restructuring programs. And we will have 20 billion drams in reserve for possible redistribution.”