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

The Government made changes in one of the previously adopted decisions, by which it is planned to invalidate the legal basis for affixing stamps in old-sample passports about the validity period in foreign countries. As a result, the quality of services provided to citizens will improve, since citizens will not have to visit the Migration and Citizenship Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs each time they leave the Republic of Armenia to affix a stamp on the validity of passports in foreign countries, which, in turn, will reduce queues at passport services. According to the substantiation, the proposed change is a mid-term solution, since passports of the type specified in the decision will be issued only until the biometric system is introduced in full.

As Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Arpine Sargsyan noted, we had about 500,000 transactions in 2021 alone. "This is quite a large percentage of the total passport-related transactions. In 2022, we had about 640,000 transactions and in the first half of 2023, excluding the peak summer part, we already had 303,000 transactions. There is just one very important point. Taking into account the fact that this does not refer to the domestic procedure, but to the relations with other foreign countries, we have set a three-month notification period for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so that foreign countries are aware of our withdrawal of this demand, and our citizens at the border of foreign countries will not face any problems at the crossing points from this point of view. Due to this important notification component, the decision is proposed to come into effect in January 1, 2024," said the deputy minister.

Nikol Pashinyan highlighted the adopted decision and noted. "This is about the institute that people originally called "5 thousand drams for passport", because at that time it was only possible to have that passport stamp for 5 years, one thousand drams per year. Then the regulations were changed, and you could have it for a year, paying 1100 drams. What was happening? When, for example, during the holiday season in August and the end of December, people who were planning to go out of the country would suddenly find that their passport was not valid in a foreign country. The question always arose: how is that I have a passport, the passport is valid, but it is not valid. I mean, something weird. I'm very glad we noticed this issue and are fixing it. Now, from January 1, 2024, the citizens of the Republic of Armenia will no longer need to have any stamps. The deadline is also due to the fact that for tens of years we have informed all foreign countries that if there is no such stamp in the passport of our citizen, the passport is not valid. Now we have to inform everyone in the coming months so that it doesn't suddenly happen that we allow the citizens to leave the republic, they face a problem in a foreign country. There are many such things in our lives that need to be found and simply eliminated to make people's lives easier, in all areas. And it is very important that the members of our government, the heads of other departments constantly look at the problems from this point of view and try to provide concrete solutions."

The Government adopted a decision by which it is planned to redistribute the funds allocated by the state budget to the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, in the amount of 482,600 thousand AMD. Accordingly, it is planned to ensure the implementation of construction works of a number of educational, cultural and sports institutions and the design works necessary for them, as well as the improvement of their property.

By the decision of the Government, 1,800,091.3 thousand AMD were allocated to the regional administrations of Aragatsotn, Armavir, Gegharkunik, Lori, Kotayk, Shirak, Syunik and Tavush. The decision plans to co-finance 30 subsidy programs of 2021, 2022 and 2023 years in 20 communities.