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

The Government approved the bill on Voluntary Work and the package of bills on amendments and additions to related laws. As the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Narek Mkrtchyan noted, with the adoption of the package of bills, clear regulations will be established to separate voluntary work from illegal work. "It will also enable citizens to gain professional experience as a result of voluntary work and then easily find a job”, said the Minister.

The Government approved the bills on amendments to the Law on Budgetary System of the Republic of Armenia, on amendments to the law on Local Self-Government and on amendments and additions to the Law on Local Self-Government in Yerevan City. With the adoption of the bills, the budgets of the communities will be supplemented with a new source of financial resources, that is, 30 percent from the financial resources received from alienated lands in the territory of the community. Referring to the bills, Nikol Pashinyan noted that the process of strengthening the institution of local self-government continues. "Yes, the strengthening of local self-government bodies is the government's policy, because the strengthening of the local government means the strengthening of the citizen, because we bring the government as close as possible to the citizen, and we should increase the decisive role of the citizens’ decisions further and further," said the Prime Minister.

The government adopted a decision, by which it is planned to redistribute the funds allocated to the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports from the state budget and allocate 440 million 290 thousand AMD to the acquisition of the design and budget documents necessary for the creation of an educational complex in the Syunik Province of Armenia. Currently, it is planned to create 40 educational complexes, of which 7 - in Kapan, 33 in other 7 enlarged communities of Syunik Province. Educational institutions were divided into 4 groups according to capacity and type. A total of 36 educational complexes will be built, 3 modular schools, which are already under construction, and the School No. 1 in Tegh, the building conditions of which are in good condition, will be transformed into educational complexes.

Tax revenues in the first quarter of 2023 outperformed by 14 billion AMD. The Prime Minister informed about this during the session and noted. "Furthermore, the revenues of the first quarter increased by 15.2 percent or about 60.8 billion AMD compared to the first quarter of 2022. During the first quarter of 2023, 93.5 billion AMD were returned to taxpayers, which exceeds the figure of the first quarter of 2022 by 82 percent or 42.2 billion AMD”.

Nikol Pashinyan noted that 13.4 billion AMD of income tax was returned to natural persons from the money collected in the first quarter, which exceeds the figure of the first quarter of 2022 by 4.4 billion AMD or 49 percent. "This is the case when, according to a special legislative regulation, we return from income taxes, in particular, for the payment of mortgage loans. This means that we support people to buy apartments in new buildings."

In the first quarter of 2023, financial transaction document of 2.4 trillion AMD were issued, which is by 591 billion AMD or 31.3 percent more than in the first quarter of 2022. "If we take only cash register receipts, then in the first quarter of 2023 cash registers worth 564 billion AMD were printed, which is by 48.7 billion AMD or 9.4 percent more than in the first quarter of 2022. I consider this very important and I want to tirelessly thank all the law-abiding taxpayers of the Republic of Armenia again and again, because it is as a result of their activity, work and law-abidingness that we are able to implement projects of this scale. But I also want to emphasize that, unfortunately, we continue to have very serious deep problems here. The good news though is that our law enforcement recently discovered a new tax evasion technology scheme that will still give us a lot of information. I want this message to be very clear: in the case of tax evasion, no one can hope for any compromise, because it is about the ability of the state to take care of the needs of our country today and in the future. I want to encourage our law enforcement agencies to continue working in this direction."

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan instructed the heads of state institutions to stop the practice of accepting various charities. "I think that the practice of state institutions receiving the traditional charity should be stopped altogether. For example: 4 chairs, TV, etc. After all, the Republic of Armenia is able to buy both a chair and a television. But, on the other hand, there are companies, there are people who want to be involved in charity. Here we need to make a substantive change, all charitable programs must be placed within the framework of the government's strategies. For example, we have decided that we are going to build an educational complex, its property must be completely new, in accordance with the standards we set. I think there is an opportunity to open a special account for philanthropists so that those who want to give money for an educational complex could do it, even targetted for a specific educational compex, asking to use it to purchase property for that purpose," said the Head of the Government, noting that whoever wants to do so charity, let them participate in the implementation of the government's strategic plans.