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

The government amended one of its previous decisions to redistribute the state budget in an effort to address the aftermath of the war unleashed by Azerbaijan and provide financial assistance for the month of April to those households registered or actually residing in the Artsakh Republic. The amendment provides that 7,548,000 thousand drams shall be allocated from the reserve fund of the 2021 state budget to 11,000,000 beneficiaries, including the pensioners domiciled in the Artsakh Republic, 68,000 drams each. Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Mesrop Arakelyan advised that nearly 33 billion drams have so far been provided to Artsakh residents under social assistance programs. “We have made a decision to earmark additional 22 billion drams under this program. In other words, the amount of assistance will make 55 billion drams altogether. More than 101,000 Artsakhis were supported last month through this program,” the Minister said.

The government approved the draft law On Amending the RA Law on Holidays and Remembrance Days. Accordingly, it is proposed to set January 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 as working days. Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan noted that according to the results of the assessment, in case of 5 additional working days in other equal conditions the volume of gross domestic product will increase by 88.6 billion drams, the volume of gross output will increase by 123 billion drams.

Prime Minister Pashinyan pointed out that this issue had been discussed every year. “I would like to note that this is a long-standing topic with the difference that formerly it used to be discussed in the second half of December. Now we offer to discuss it today in order to understand what kind of public agreement we can form in this regard, considering that this is a delicate and important issue at the same time.”

The Premier suggested approving the bill, with follow-up discussions to be held on the matter. “The bill shall be circulated in the National Assembly. Before that, we are raising the issue to generate a certain public opinion in order to understand the public perception thereof,” Nikol Pashinyan said, noting that the bill is subject to amendment and may not be passed after all.

The government approved a set of measures to ensure self-development of young people, social entrepreneurship, create cultural and entertainment environments, as well as to establish innovation centers in the provinces.

Prime Minister Pashinyan noted that there are no such centers for young people operational in the region or in most of the regions. “We need such centers, especially in the regions. A few centers were formed over time in Yerevan and Gyumri without the government’s intervention. And we decided to support the establishment of such centers in the provinces. There are individuals who have initiated such environments in a number of cities; we have successful experiences in this field. As a result, we decided to launch a grant program by offering all those who have such initiatives in mind to submit them to the relevant tender committee and now we have winners. We thereby just support the latter to create such centers that will serve as a youth environment where content and communication is what matters most. Last year we announced a competition, there were winners, but the allocation of grant funds was postponed due to the war. We have now decided to resume this program, which means that we will allocate funds for implementing the short-listed projects,” the Prime Minister said

The meeting passed a decision “On establishing the office of Commercial Attaché of the Republic of Armenia in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The government next approved a proposal to sign Amendment 15 to the agreement between the Government of the Republic of Armenia and the Government of the United States of America on promoting a more competitive and diversified private sector. Submitted by USAID, the draft amendment provides for additional funding of USD 8,200,000 in support of Armenia’s infrastructure improvement programs.