YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 5, ARMENPRESS. The amount allocated to the culture minister will not undergo significant changes next year. The ministry has simply made re-distributions within, caretaker minister of culture Lilit Makunts said during parliamentary committee debates of the 2019 state budget bill.

“The state budget bill envisages the allocation of a bit more than 15 billion drams to the ministry of culture. The budget did not undergo significant changes. Redistributions simply took place. The main development direction is the cultural heritage project. The budget allocated for this is nearly 3 billion drams. The arts project budget is 7,7 billion drams, the cinematography project is 815 million drams, the book and [writing] project is 1 billion 740 million drams,” she said.

Speaking about redistributions, Makunts noted that she believes that the emphasis in the filmmaking sector should be made not on quantity, but qualitative indicators. She substantiated the need for reducing allocations in conditions of scarce resources with this fact. However, she stressed that they must have films of greater quality.

She said they defined as a priority the combination of culture and education and special attitude for historic-cultural monuments while planning the budget.

The cultural development program for provinces will comprise nearly 270 million drams, a rather large indicator, according to Makunts.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan