By Karine Melkonyan

The coordinator of the “In Our Way” movement of Armenia, Narek Karapetyan, on Monday announced that the Armenian government has allocated $65 million for the expenses of the Prime Minister’s Office in 2026. According to him, this figure has increased by about four times compared to previous years, and the amount exceeds the sum of the annual expenses of the royal families of Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark.

After this statement, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Chief of Staff Arayik Harutyunyan and the Fact Investigation Platform rushed to describe Karapetyan’s words as lies and manipulation.

The Fact-Checking Platform, in particular, “clarified” that the expenses of the Prime Minister’s Office did not quadruple, but increased by “only” $20 million.

Arayik Harutyunyan noted in his response that the Armenian Prime Minister’s staff has larger functions and offices than those royal families.

Almost the same argument is presented by the Fact Investigation Platform: royal families are not governing bodies.

However, if we turn to the numbers, Narek Karapetyan’s claim concerned exclusively the comparison of expenses. Thus, according to open sources, the annual expenses of the royal families of the aforementioned countries by Karapetyan are:

Spain: about 8.4 million euros

Sweden: about 8–9 million euros

Belgium: about 11.55 million euros

Denmark: about 12–13 million euros

Total: 41.95 million euros, or 49 million US dollars at the current exchange rate in Armenia.

The Fact Investigation Platform presented the following figures as a result of its own research:

Spain - 8.43 million euros, or 9.3 million USD,

Sweden - 99.1 million Swedish kronor, or 9.8 million USD,

Belgium - 14.9 million euros, or about 16.4 million USD,

Denmark - 127.2 million Danish kronor, or about 19 million USD.

According to these calculations, the total expenses of the four royal families amount to about 53 million USD, which is about 12 million USD less than the planned expenses of the Armenian Prime Minister's Office.

Thus, even the figures presented by the Fact Investigation Platform do not contradict Karapetyan's main claim that the total expenses of the mentioned royal families do not exceed the annual budget of the Armenian Prime Minister's Office.

The focus of Narek Karapetyan's video message was not so much a comparison, but the issue of cost-effectiveness. He specifically gave examples of what socioeconomic programs could be implemented with that $65 million.

It is noteworthy that neither Arayik Harutyunyan nor the Fact Investigation Platform have addressed this.

According to Narek Karapetyan, unlike the current Armenian government, an effective government with $65 million could:

Create state-owned enterprises in one region every year, contributing to economic development and creating new jobs in order to solve the issue of unemployment in these regions.

Provide 20,000 people living in extreme poverty with food and clothing, solving the issue of extreme poverty in the country.

Provide 100,000 of the most vulnerable pensioners with cards that will enable them to make purchases worth 20-25,000 drams from Armenian brands.

What will Arayik Harutyunyan and the fact investigating platforms say? Could the Armenian government do such a thing? Or will they consider this also a lie and manipulative?

The question remains open. Could the Armenian government implement such programs? Or will these calculations also be labeled as “false” or “manipulative?”

Perhaps these problems would be easier to solve if the aforementioned royal families were approached?