YEREVAN. - Tax exemptions already cost the Armenian budget roughly 420 billion AMD (approx. $870 million), Armenia’s Minister of Finance Gagik Khachatryan said in the parliament today at the debate on the Draft State Budget of Armenia for 2016.  

The exemption already cost the budget 380 billion AMD, and the new ones added [another] 41 billion to them. This means these amounts will not enter the budget, the Minister said.

According to him, the last exemption measure – raising the threshold of turnover tax – reduced the tax revenues in 2015 by 6 billion AMD.

“We understand that this helps invigorate the economy, but we know we have to pay for this,” the Minister said.