YEREVAN. – At Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, the government of Armenia made a decision to provide a loan from the state budget to extend the duration of the operation of the second power unit of the country’s nuclear plant.

The matter was presented by the Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure, Suren Papikyan. He noted that within the framework of the program of extending the duration of the operation of this power unit, agreements on cooperation and on providing a loan were signed between the Armenian and Russian governments. "However, in order to complete the work in full, we consider it expedient to provide a loan on the account of Armenia's own funds," Papikyan added, in particular.

In his turn, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said: "The existing [Russian] loan is not very convenient in terms of amount and conditions to organize the further operation of the nuclear power plant, and we turn down a part of that loan, and instead include funds from internal sources, which will undoubtedly be made in much better conditions, and will further increase the leverage of the government in terms of increasing the level of efficiency of the use of this loan.”