It is necessary to continue work on reduction of cash turnover, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in the National Assembly at the joint session of the parliamentary standing committees during the discussion of the draft state budget for 2023 on Wednesday.

According to him, cash circulation reduction will ensure three effects at once. First of all, as Pashinyan noted, there will be an anti-corruption effect. "Governments state their intention to put an end to corruption, but the most important indicator of sincerity of their intentions for me is their actions. For example, what are they doing to reduce cash turnover? After all, this significantly reduces opportunities for corruption," the prime minister explained.

The next effect is fiscal. Prime Minister stressed that the transparency of cash turnover also contributes to a larger inflow of funds into the state budget. And this, in turn, contributes to financial-economic and macroeconomic stability.

The third effect is social. "In Armenia, this approach has been applied relatively recently. In particular, we are talking about cashback for pensioners in case they use non-cash funds. We increased pensions in September. We are going to raise them from the beginning of the next year too, but the reform realized in the part of providing cashback is also a kind of rise in pensions, since it promotes a certain increase of means of pensioners," Pashinyan explained, adding that the use of cashless means by pensioners has substantially increased.

In the Prime Minister's opinion this means only one thing: the reform was correct.

The same mechanisms, Pashinyan continued, should be introduced for other social payments. For example, family allowances.