On the occasion of New Year and Christmas holidays, a festive reception was held for business community representatives on behalf of Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. During the meeting, Nikol Pashinyan extended his best wishes on the upcoming holiday season. In his congratulatory speech, the Acting Prime Minister dwelt on the economic results of 2018 and the expectations for 2019.

Addressing the audience, Nikol Pashinyan stated, in part:
“Dear business community representatives, I am glad to see you here. Let me first thank you for the work done in 2018, because 2018 was a year of turbulent political events, but one of its important features was that in fact, we were able to avoid economic shocks. This was also the result of exceptional efforts exerted by Armenia’s business community and indeed is highly appreciated by the Government.

What I would like to state next in the context of my holiday season’s congratulations is as follows: I think that we have an exceptional opportunity to raise to a new level the relationship between the government and the business community and give this relationship a new quality in 2019. I can assure you that there will be no such people in the elite of the Armenian government to pursue group or personal economic interests. This means that our main task will be to reinvigorate the economy and promote the success of economic entities.

The most important motivation that we have in this area is the success of all companies without exception. There is not a single company in Armenia that we are not keen to see carry on successful activities, for any reason whatsoever. There is not a single company in Armenia that is outside the scope of our interest. This is a very important and exceptional situation in our reality, and it follows from our main interest. We want all Armenian companies to get more profit, more income in 2019, so that they can pay more taxes to the Republic of Armenia.

We also want to assure you that the imperative of spending these taxes more effectively and purposefully will be one of our top priorities for the benefit of our country and our national interests. We must work together to that effect. This is a truly unique opportunity to achieve a new level of partnership.

Indeed, the situation also implies that the business community should actively participate in the implementation of legislative reforms so that the economic reforms we intend to implement could serve this goal, and not lead to opposite effect, because we have plans, certain ideas, but it is up to you to apply them in practice, and it is crucial to make sure in advance that the practical application of these changes might actually lead to positive results.

Of course, our country has big ambitions and big tasks set before it, and you are supposed to be the ones to finance these goals and objectives, I mean exclusively legitimate funding, because I want to emphasize once again that business entities are free from any kind of corruption commitments in the Republic of Armenia. Though this puts ever greater responsibility on you, since the tasks we have set ourselves as a nation can only be solved if your work, your activity is more successful, which in turn will lead to higher budget revenue, and we will be in a position to properly deal with all the problems faced by our state.

I sincerely congratulate all of us on the remarkable year 2018, because I believe that 2018 will remain in our history and memory as a positive year, and I wish that 2019 could remain as a much more positive year in our history and memory.

We hope that together we can achieve this target. And, therefore, please accept my felicitations on the upcoming New Year and Christmas holidays. Thank you.”