YEREVAN. – The Ministry of Health says, “The payments collected toward the activities of registration of drugs, testing will stay with us, we’ll spend [them].” And we are saying, “No, the money has to go to the budget, be spent from there.” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan noted this at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting of the government of Armenia while discussing the proposed amendments to the law on medical drugs.

“Every [government] department can’t have its own style of administration because the style of administration is the government,” Pashinyan said. “We have already decided that this is the best option for all parties. There are institutions in the public administration system that are big businesses; that’s bad.”