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

Before discussing the agenda items, the Premier referred to the economic activity indicators: “Armenia’s economy is showing the first signs of post-crisis recovery. As of the first 15 days of February, 604 thousand more transactions were recorded in Armenia through cash registers and settlement documents than in the first 15 days of February, 2020. Money turnover increased by 12% or nearly 31.4 billion drams as compared to the first 15 days of February last year. By the way, I would like to remind you that we did not face a COVID-related crisis in the first 15 days of February, 2020, since there were no cases of coronavirus infection registered in Armenia by the first half of February last year. In the meantime, we recorded a very serious growth in February, 2020 as compared to the previous year. I should also note that exports and imports rose sharply during the first 15 days of this February. All this comes to evidence that the economy seems to be entering a phase of recovery, and this is important news indeed.”

By the Government’s decision, 470 million drams will be allocated to the Urban Development Committee to solve the housing problems of those families deprived of the opportunity to manage their residential property (land, buildings and outbuildings) due to demarcation in the village of Shurnukh, Goris community, Syunik Marz.

Head of the Urban Development Committee Armen Ghularyan advised that the program is planned to be completed within 3 years. “In the first stage, due to be implemented in 2021, it is planned to build 13 houses and roads without asphalt paving. The second stage implies that all infrastructures will be complete in 2022. In the third stage, we think that there may be a need to raise the issue of building some public and agricultural facilities during 2022-2023. According to preliminary estimates, 700 million drams will be needed for the first two stages.”

The Executive approved a procedure for providing monthly financial assistance for a period of 4 months to the citizens registered or actually residing in the Artsakh Republic in order to alleviate the economic and social consequences of the war unleashed by Azerbaijan on September 27, 2020.

Financial support will be provided by the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Migration of the Artsakh Republic, in case the beneficiary is a pensioner domiciled in the Artsakh Republic, or otherwise by the Service, if the beneficiary is not a pensioner domiciled in Artsakh and has submitted an electronic application. The online applications will have to be submitted through the e.ssa.am website from February 25 to June 15, 2021.

Referring to the aforementioned assistance programs, the Prime Minister said 18 support measures had been approved as part of the roadmap published by him. “I should admit that we have some problems as regards the progress in the implementation of those 18 measures. In particular, the program intended for wounded servicemen does not seem to be moving forward at the required pace. As far as I can understand from my contacts with citizens, the program of assistance to the families of our missing and captured compatriots has not been completed yet. In other words, there are beneficiaries who have not yet received the amount, and we need to work more intensively to solve this problem. The next issue we are dealing with is that the categories need to be changed to make the proposed support more effective. I feel that the relevant government decisions needs amending in terms of the distribution scheme in order to make it more targeted. A serious shortfall is the failure to register children as program beneficiaries; this raises some questions in practice. I have already suggested that we should do some research there, as there seems to be a need for specific adjustments. I think we need to take note of the problems and concerns voiced by the beneficiaries in order to tackle this issue,” Nikol Pashinyan said.

The Government made redistribution in the 2021 State budget bill, amending one of the previously adopted decisions. 954 million drams will thereby be earmarked to the fulfillment of the obligations assumed under a number of decisions passed in 2020. In particular, 165 million drams will be used to comply with the brandy alcohol export duty reimbursement commitment.