YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian parliament’s fiscal and budgetary affairs committee has unanimously approved the 2019 state budget bill during its November 12 sitting.

“We are introducing a new culture in terms of budgetary programs assessment,” caretaker minister of finance Atom Janjughazyan said. “It’s assumed that issues of public interest will receive their answers as a result of introducing this method – the budgetary process in the program format. For the record, we succeeded in carrying out this phase of budget debates with the involvement of parliament and the government. We can note that we have very good starting conditions to aspire for perfection,” he said.

According to committee chair Gagik Minasyan, the specificity of the draft is the program format, which will enable to carry out institutional fight against corruption.

Earlier today the economic affairs committee of the Armenian parliament also unanimously approved the 2019 state budget bill.

 “This bill has a number of unique circumstances which are significant for debates. First of all, the philosophy of the state budget is mostly maintained and is in conformity with the challenges that we are facing. Also for the first time the 2019 budget is presented in a program budgeting format,” committee chair Khosrov Harutyunyan said at the sitting.

The draft budget will further be debated at a plenary session of parliament.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan