YEREVAN. – In Armenia, officials are allocated bonus pays when salaries in the public sector are comparable to those in the private sector. Acting Minister of Finance Atom Janjughazyan stated this at Wednesday’s joint meeting of the standing parliamentary committees on economic, financial-credit and budgetary affairs, during the discussion of the report on the implementation of the 2020 state budget.

Thus, according to him, at the moment the average monthly income in the public sector—and taking into account the bonuses—is 360 thousand drams. At that, the average monthly salary in Armenia is less than 200 thousand drams; that is, less than 150 thousand drams—taking into account the taxes.

"Until 2019, there were various salaries in the state apparatus, and each department had its own amount of salary. (…). There were departments that provided bonuses from extra-budgetary funds," Janjughazyan said.

On the other hand, as the acting minister mentioned, there were departments where there was no bonus fund.

He noted that it has been proposed to create a single system of bonuses for all departments.

Janjughazyan believes that salaries in the public sector of Armenia should be comparable to those in the private sector.

He also said that in 2020 it was planned to hire 19,709 employees to the public sector. It was planned to allocate 87.4 billion drams for the payment of salaries and bonuses, of which 65 billion 458 million drams were paid as salaries and bonuses.

The bonuses amounted to 15 billion 477 million drams. The judicial, public and civil service employees were paid 3 billion 928 million drams as a bonus, and 2 billion 548 million dram—to  the employees of the tax and customs service. Thus, in 2020, Armenian officials were paid bonuses totaling 22 billion drams.