YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. The 2019 budget revenues in Armenia will be overfulfilled not by 40 billion drams, but 62 billion AMD, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during today’s press conference summing up the 1^st anniversary of his election as PM.

“The budget revenues have increased by 25% or 64.1 billion drams in the first quarter of 2019 compared to the same period of 2018, which is mainly conditioned by the increase of budget revenues as a result of cutting the shadow. Based on the reduction of the shadow, the tax revenues and state fees comprised 21.8% of the GDP in 2018 with comparable figures, which has been improved by 1.3 percentage point against 2017”, the PM said.

He stated that for many years an issue was being discussed in Armenia that the tax authorities have demanded overpayments from the economic entities. “As of January 1, 2018, the debt comprised 130 billion drams, this means that the business has paid so much money. After the change in power the tax authorities have accepted a report from the business, but have not charged money for that and 120 billion AMD liability has been paid, this means that the government has returned nearly 300 million drams to the business with this article only”, he said.

After the revolution nearly 19 billion drams worth of VAT has been returned to the economic entities compared to the same period of the previous year. 51.000 jobs have been removed from the shadow.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan