Today Armenia is facing difficult challenges, the catastrophic economic, social and security consequences and challenges of the pandemic and the 44-day war have not yet been overcome. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this Thursday, presenting—at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting of the government of the Republic of Armenia (RA)—his message on the draft state budget for 2022. Pashinyan noted as follows, in particular:
"The 2021 NA [(National Assembly)] elections overcame the internal political crisis and created quite a solid foundation for consolidation and the aspiration of the Armenian people to look to the future. In August, we presented the Action Plan for 2021-2026, which shall lay the groundwork for the peaceful, sustainable, and inclusive development of Armenia in the medium term.
Our goals, which are expressed in the 2022 budget and action plan, are ambitious and realistic. We acknowledge that their implementation requires not only economic intervention by the government, but also social and cultural transformations. First of all, we attach importance to increasing the efficiency of the public administration system and the transformation and development of the work culture. Most important, perhaps, is the culture of planning and implementation, the processes of implementation of programs, the imperfection of which leads to under-execution of capital expenditures, thus slowing down the implementation of government-set goals and hampering economic growth.
In this regard, the increasing of the capacity of the private sector plays an important role, and the government's efforts to this end have begun to bear fruit, in the form of companies that make investments to become competitive in the state capital construction sector, thus striving to implement projects with quality and timeliness.
The government will continue the policy of stimulating investments in this sphere, using three main tools for that. First, transparency of the public procurement system, 2. Increasing the amount of tenders for bidding, 3. Legislative innovations aimed at simplifying relations with reliable companies.
The next important issue is the development of analytical skills, which will enable to increase the effectiveness of expenditures, investments, the targeting of social programs, which is one of the key issues. As a result, the confidence of the RA citizens that their taxes are spent more efficiently and targeted will increase. Every day, the RA citizens shall sense on their lives the impact of the measures taken by the government. An important component of this is the engagement of the general public at various stages of budgeting and implementation, towards which many steps have already been taken over the past three years.
The 2022 budget is based on three main priorities:
1) Security system reform
2) Infrastructure development
3) Modernization of education and science.
We will pay great attention to security, without which it will not be possible to achieve long-term development goals. In this sense, it is important not only to modernize the army's defense capabilities, but also to create a favorable external environment around RA, to consistently implement the agenda of opening a peaceful era for Armenia, Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)], and the region.
In this sense, the reopening and development of regional economic and transport infrastructure is also important, which can qualitatively change the content and structure of Armenia’s economy, become an additional impetus for the development of domestic Armenian infrastructure, ensure long-term inclusive economic growth, creating equal conditions for RA citizens to engage in economic activity, considerably increase the appeal of our country for foreign direct investment.
In this context, too, the development of education is of key importance to Armenia, so access to education, inclusive development, and substantive reform is our long-term priority. (…).
We are confident that the government's program will have a successful implementation to ensure the security, well-being, and dignified life of the citizens of Armenia.”
