YEREVAN. – The amount of guaranteed compensation for individuals’ bank deposits in national currency will increase in Armenia from the current 10 million drams to 16 million. The MP behind the respective bill, Mikayel Melkumyan—a member of the opposition Prosperous Armenia faction in the National Assembly (NA) and an economist by profession—said this during its debates at Tuesday's meeting of the NA Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs.

According to him, in addition to the aforesaid, in case of adoption of these legislative changes, the amount of currency deposit guarantees will increase from the current 5 million drams to 7 million. "We are confident that such an increase is right at this stage, including in terms of increasing the confidence of depositors," Melkumyan said.

Moreover, these changes shall apply to all bank deposits in Armenia, not only to new ones.

The MP added that this bill was developed together with the Central Bank of Armenia.

According to him, at present, these guarantees extend to about 41% of the total amount of the bank deposits and to about 97% of the number of these deposits. "The changes allow reaching a level of 44 to 45 percent of the guarantees for the full amount of deposits," the lawmaker explained.

After a short discussion, the aforesaid parliamentary committee approved this bill.