YEREVAN, JUNE 18, ARMENPRESS. During the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund on June 18, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called on the members of the Board to discuss the idea of creating a pan-Armenian budget.

The PM said the creation of a pan-Armenian budget will enable to ensure the engagement of every Armenian in the world in this process which in its turn will contribute to the preservation of the Armenian identity.

“Whether the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund must implement programs in the Diaspora? I think the debate on this issue is linked with perceptions that the Fund is mainly engaged in constructing some physical structures, and here a question arises that if the Fund, for example, is constructing a road or a building, why it should construct a building or a road in the Diaspora? Thus, this is illogical. But there is also another issue which is linked with the Armenian unity and identity. Today we live in an era when every year many young Armenians are cut off from the Armenian identity, and this is a serious issue we face today. Whether this is not a topic for us to deal with? In the new era, unfortunately, many people are cut off from the Armenian agenda due to objective and subjective reasons, and thus from the Armenian identity, and returning or preserving the youth within the Armenian identity and agenda, I think, is an issue the Fund should also deal with. That can be Armenia for making the Armenian agenda, programs more attractive so that people will be aware of how they can engage. Finally, engagement, not the money, should be the philosophy in the new times of the Hayastan Fund. The Fund should not be a place of giving and spending money, but should be a mean of being engaged and provide a feeling of being a part of the whole to each person.

In this sense, I think the idea of a pan-Armenian budget is very attractive, and we should put much greater tasks before us. For instance, the Fund’s budget should become comparable with Armenia’s state budget in the long-run so that we can concretely serve our national and state ambitions. We have potential, dreams, desires, but do not have a tool to implement them, and therefore I would propose to somehow discuss the logic of a pan-Armenian budget”, Pashinyan said.

The annual meeting of the Board of Trustees of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund has kicked off today in Yerevan. The meeting was attended by Armenia’s President Armen Sarkissian, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, President of Artsakh Bako Sahakyan and other high-ranking officials from Armenia, Artsakh and the Diaspora.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan