YEREVAN. – The state budget is security; we pay to the budget to together ensure our collective security. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this during Friday’s debates on the 2019 state budget performance report, at the joint sitting of the standing committees of the National Assembly of Armenia.

"I hope that this process has started in 2019," he added. "The state budget is the backbone of Armenia's statehood, and the fulfillment of obligations to the budget is the will the Republic of Armenia citizen has expressed to have a statehood."

"There should be a significant change also in the context of the attitude toward public officials' salaries and payments made to them because (…) in the conditions of the arrangement that we exclude the existence of a corruption pyramid, the citizen of the Republic of Armenia must want, must demand that state officials shall receive high salary; it is an expression of the will to have a state.

(…) hiring and involving qualified officials, qualified employees can change a very important thing in the life of the citizens of the Republic of Armenia; this is the logic of our actions," Nikol Pashinyan also said.