YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian parliamentary standing committee on financial-credit and budgetary affairs approved the 2021 state budget performance annual report.

Minister of Finance Tigran Khachatryan presented the annual report at the standing committee.

“We described 2021 as a year of very complex challenges as it was necessary to respond to the consequences of both the coronavirus pandemic, and the social and economic consequences of the 44-Day War, and ensure a macro-economic stability which was a very important task. We consider that it has been implemented in general with a very big success because the state revenues have increased both with absolute and relative indicators, the planned expenditures have been fulfilled completely, no spending has been delayed because of lack of financial resources. The debt management has become more reliable”, the minister said.

The economic growth, which was initially forecast to be 3.2%, was 5.7%.

Last year tax revenues comprised 1 trillion 587 billion drams or the 22.7% of the GDP. It was 147 billion drams more in 2021 than planned initially. The actual expenditure in 2021 has been 2 trillion 4 billion drams. The performance in terms of expenditures has been very close to 100%, and the actual performance of capital expenditures has been 92.3% to the adjusted plan. According to the minister, this is the highest figure of the past 4-5 years.

As for the state debt, the minister said: “The year of 2021 was aimed at improving the relative debt ratio, because we had registered a very high increase in 2020, the government debt to 2019 increased by 13.4%, reaching the 63.5% of the GDP. We managed to lower these figures in 2021, and it comprised 60.3% of the GDP”, he said.

The state budget deficit in 2021 comprised 4.6%, which is 0.8% lower against the GDP than in the previous year.

The 2021 state budget performance report was approved with 5 votes in favor. It will be debated at the Parliament’s plenary session.