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

The government amended one of its previous decisions to prevent cases of theft of high-demand or regular license plates of cars. The amendment provides that a duplicate license plate shall be offered in case of loss of an old one. Chief of Police Vahe Ghazaryan pointed out that in case of loss of license plates, the user will be able to get a duplicate of his license plate with the indication of the serial number of the duplicate in Arabic numerals by paying the state duty (12 thousand AMD). “The decision comes into force three months after the official publication. This period is necessary to prepare the capabilities necessary for printing duplicates with the Arabic numerals stamped on the duplicate number. The decision covers the cases that have occurred since January 1, 2020,” Vahe Ghazaryan said.

Stressing the importance of the decision, Nikol Pashinyan said: “You may know that a new type of theft has appeared in Armenia and in the world, as a whole: thieves steal license plates and return them after extorting money from the owners. Our law enforcement authorities have recently detected and arrested several such groups, but in order to make this type of fraud senseless, we decided to adopt the following decision: to issue a duplicate license plate for a corresponding state fee. In this case, citizens will not be forced to pay huge money for the return of their license plates. Instead they will receive a duplicate number directly for the cost of the state duty. I believe that this is an important decision, which gives a radical solution to the problem.”

The government made a decision to provide funds for paying social benefits for the month of June to citizens registered or actually living in the Republic of Artsakh in order to mitigate the economic and social impact of the war unleashed by Azerbaijan. Accordingly, funds will be earmarked from the state budget to support beneficiaries for June; those who became eligible for financial assistance for the first time in June shall get assistance for the previous months as well. The required amount is 7 billion 344 million drams.

Touching upon the adopted decision, Nikol Pashinyan noted: “It seems to be obvious that after the well-known events we faced a primary tasks to restore normal life in Artsakh as soon as possible, to provide welfare assistance to people in order to prevent the social collapse. However, we are now discussing with the President and the Government of Artsakh that we should move on to development programs in an effort to promote labor and economic activity.”

Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan presented details on the total volume of assistance programs provided to Artsakh. In particular, he noted that the volume of social activities will reach the mark of 80 billion.

The meeting established a procedure for financing pre-school educational institutions from the state budget on a per pupil basis, including an increase in the amount of funding required to provide the necessary conditions for those in need of special educational and developmental conditions. Accordingly, a step-by-step budgeting approach has been developed to ensure easy access to preschool services for priority groups.