YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian government is planning very serious social programs by the 2019 state budget bill, caretaker Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in parliament today during debates of the draft budget.

Pashinyan said that as result of budgetary decisions, 85,000 vulnerable pensioners will receive sufficient pensions in 2019 for “us to be certain that they have the possibility to buy food”.

He added that as a result of amendments in the accumulative pension system, salaries of 206,000 citizens have already been raised.

“Salaries of 210 thousand people will rise as a result of revenue tax changes. I already said that as a result of decisions regarding microbusinesses the income of nearly 70,000 citizens will basically increase. We have made a decision that in 2019 the salaries of 14,000 employees of polyclinics will rise. These are important indicators to emphasize that we are simultaneously advancing in a balanced manner on the path of encouraging employment and creating certain social protection guarantees,” Pashinyan said.

He said that approximately 350,000 people in Armenia have the status of primary taxpayer. “Basically these 350,000 are people who pay taxes by creating it [taxes] from scratch”, he said.

“Our task is to carry out the kind of policy where the number of these primary taxpayers will be doubled, tripled …”, he added. “Why? Because basically we have a situation where these 350,000 people, as taxpayers, bear on their shoulders the funding responsibility for the security of the entire state system, quality of roads, infrastructure, education and public administration”.

He stressed that it is the government’s duty to carry out a policy whereby citizens will believe in their own powers, will believe that they themselves can create results.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan