A regular Cabinet meeting took place today, chaired by Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan.

The Government approved the procedure for assigning and paying financial assistance for the birth of the third and each subsequent child in the family. According to the current legal regulations of the Republic of Armenia, state benefits conditioned by the number of children are provided only when the baby is born, which is a one-time payment. In order to improve the demographic situation, it is proposed to assign and pay financial assistance for the 3rd and each subsequent child in the family in the amount of 50,000 AMD per month, until and including the month of the child reaching the age of 6 years.

The Prime Minister expressed hope that the program will be implemented effectively. "In 2025, we will return to the program to evaluate it and solve the issue of its further continuation," Nikol Pashinyan said, reminding that this program is one of the pre-election promises of the "Civil Contract" party.

The Government made a decision, which envisages to direct 128,439.6 thousand drams through redistribution from the 2021 budget of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport for the solidification, repair and renovation of a number of monuments in the Republic of Armenia, for carrying out excavations, preparation of scientific project documents, and the preparation and installation of a special display case for the storage of the archeological finding of the leather shoes discovered from Areni-1 cave dating back 3600-3500 BC.

Nikol Pashinyan noted that special attention should be paid to the preservation of historical monuments. “We had to start a program in 2020, which was interrupted by the war. I am talking about the implementation of a program for the preservation and restoration of historical and cultural monuments that symbolize our statehood. In this case, we are talking about castles and fortresses. In this case, it’s about castles and fortresses. We have a very rich heritage of castles, fortresses, structures of civil and state significance. But the rich heritage is not sufficiently preserved and available to the public, starting from the roads. There are no proper roads leading to those castles. The next problem is that for a very long time they have not been restored or reinforced at all. Within the framework of this program, we are allocating money for the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church in the community of Amrakits, and this direction is also very important," the Prime Minister said.

By the decisions of the Government, the results of the elections of Armen Muradyan as the rector of Yerevan State Medical University after Mkhitar Heratsi and Hovhannes Hovhannisyan as the rector of Yerevan State University were confirmed.

Conditioned with the current situation over the coronavirus infection in the country, the Government made a decision to allocate money to the Ministry of Health for ensuring the uninterrupted supply of vaccines to prevent the coronavirus infection. In particular, back in July 2021, the Ministry of Health initiated the process of obtaining the vaccines of the German company Pfizer. Currently, the negotiations are over, the contract is in the signing stage, the vaccines are planned to be imported by the end of the year. 1.2 billion AMD will be allocated to the Ministry of Health for the purchase of 200,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine.

The situation over the coronavirus was also discussed at the Cabinet meeting today. The Minister of Health Anahit Avanesyan presented the epidemic situation in Armenia, noting that at the moment it is stable. Responding, Nikol Pashinyan noted that vaccinations should be continued to resist the next wave of coronavirus.