YEREVAN. – On his Facebook livestream Friday morning, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan touched upon his statement that over 50,000 jobs were created in Armenia since last year’s revolution.

“I have declared that about 50,000 jobs have come out of the shadow [economy], or have been created in Armenia over the past year,” Pashinyan said. “When I publicized this number from the PACE podium, many public statements were voiced that were questioning that number. (…) and I had instructed to prepare a statement so that we have the opening as to in which specific domain those jobs were discovered or created.

“The first hypothesis is that they are shadow [economy] jobs and they came out of the shadow after the revolution. (…). [But] the main thing is that 50,141 more jobs were registered in the Republic of Armenia in January 2019, against January 2018.”

In his words, all this has been found out on the basis of tax statements submitted by taxpayers.

“These numbers can’t be unreal because they are formed based on tax accounts submitted by enterprises,” the PM added. “This may seem like from the fantasy genre, but that fantasy is a reality in Armenia, and that’s great! This is not the success of the government, but the result of the rising of our companies’ consciousness, or attitude towards the situation.”

“These people, including entrepreneurs, are mastering the revolution they have made themselves,” Pashinyan stressed. “In January 2019, 562,043 jobs were registered in the Republic of Armenia; in  2018—511,902.”