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

The Government has approved the draft laws "On Amendments and Additions to the Tax Code", "On Amendments and Additions to the Law on Local Duties and Fees" and "On Establishing the Procedure for Cadastral Appraisal Approximated to the Market Value of Real Estate for the Purpose of Taxation of Immovable Property". The purpose of the drafts is to improve the procedures for taxation of structures built on state and community-owned land, including arbitrary structures, as well as to review the tax burden on those buildings aimed at creating incentives for completing unfinished buildings. The drafts propose to establish that arbitrary buildings built on state and community property plots are also considered to be subject to immovable property taxation. It is also planned to establish that in the case of the expiration or extension of the construction permit, the coefficients that reduce the real estate tax base depending on the degree of completion will not be applied. Building permit extensions are also subject to a local levy at evidently high rates, to discourage developers from continually extending building dates. The drafts also propose to increase local fees for issuing building permits.

Nikol Pashinyan emphasized the adoption of the drafts, which envisage other regulations after the construction permit expires. "Property taxes must be paid. In order to extend the building permits for the second time, one has to make payments at different rates. This is the first regulation. Let's see what effect it will have on the situation. In the future, I do not rule out the use of stricter methods. I think this is a very important regulation. In fact, even if this construction does not take place, at least the community budget should receive some kind of compensation for it, and property taxes should be paid," the Prime Minister said.

The Government approved the procedure for providing state support to commercial organizations and individual entrepreneurs operating in the field of information technology in order to support the development of the information technology sector in the country, as well as to maintain Armenia’s chances for effective competition with other countries. According to the substantiation, a number of tax benefits are applied in different countries for business entities operating in the IT sector. Most of the companies operating in the IT sector receive their income from abroad in foreign currency, and the fact that currently, as a result of the devaluation of the US dollar and the Euro, the financial income of local companies has been respectively reduced, which has become an obstacle to the normal development of the companies. The provision of support will be an impetus for the development of companies, enabling to maintain the existing jobs, while not reducing the salaries of employees.

By Government decision, 1,342,950.9 thousand AMD will be allocated to the regional administrations of Aragatsotn, Ararat, Armavir, Gegharkunik, Lori, Kotayk, Vayots Dzor and Tavush Provinces for the implementation of subsidy programs. According to another decision, 959,827.5 thousand AMD will be allocated to Aragatsotn, Gegharkunik, Lori and Shirak regional administrations for subsidy provision.

At today's Cabinet meeting, Nikol Pashinyan referred to the poverty index 2021 published by the Statistical Committee. "In 2021, poverty in the Republic of Armenia was 26.5 percent. Moreover, if we compare the indicator with 2020, we have a certain poverty reduction in 2021, but an increase of 0.1 percentage point compared to 2019. I also want to emphasize the following: you are aware that from 2019 the poverty index is calculated using a new methodology. That is, we cannot compare the data before 2019 with the data available after 2019, because the calculations were carried out with completely different methodologies. The next interesting indicator that I would like to mention is that we have an increase of 0.1 percent in the case of extreme poverty compared to 2019, and compared to 2020, extreme poverty increased by 0.8 percent. This figure shows that our measures against the Covid crisis in 2020 have been highly targeted. In other words, as a result of our measures against Covid in 2020, we have reduced extreme poverty by half, but since Covid has ended and the anti-crisis programs have also ended, it has increased slightly," said the Prime Minister.

The Head of the Government noted that he has given an instruction to the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs to deeply analyze the structure of poverty and develop a strategy for overcoming poverty. "This should be done within our ideology. And the ideology is as follows, it is my belief: poverty can be overcome only through work. There is no other way to overcome poverty. In this regard, I believe that we should seriously examine our policy in the social sphere. Today we have a labor shortage problem in the labor market. Firstly, unemployment in our country has reached its lowest level ever. And today we constantly receive these alerts from the private sector that they have a problem of finding employees," Nikol Pashinyan emphasized.