For the past two weeks the Parliament of the Republic of Armenia is deliberating on the 2013 State Budget. The political parties and the Prime minister have delivered their assessments and projections. The three oppositional parties, Armenian National Congress (HAK), ARF-D and Heritage (Zharangutyun) as well as the self-considered alternative choice Prosperous Armenia Party have announced that they will vote against the draft brought to discussion by the government.
On behalf of ARF-D, Artsvik Minasyan criticized the government’s draft and underlined that it offers no solution to Armenia’s problems like unemployment, emigration and the need to improve the justice system.
At the same time, the opposition combined its criticism with the presentation of its propositions.
The Prime minister thanked the Parliament for their work and said that the government has received more than 60 propositions.
ARF-D’s propositions for the 2013 state budget and the on-going social-economical policy are as follows:
1. In order to cope with the challenges that the country faces, it is necessary to quickly draw a new social-economical development strategy with the participation of civic and political forces and the involvement in the process, of capable forces.
2. It is imperative to stop seeing the budget as an end-in-itself policy. Budgets must be drawn at least on a three-year basis and must be considered as a means, projecting medium and long term guidelines.
3. The targets of the social-economical development must be: increasing employment to at least 65%, taking investments to at least 35% of the GDP, taking in the long term the budget revenue diversification and state budget revenues to GDP ratio, to at least 35%, the taxes to GDP ratio, to at least 25%, getting the share from direct taxes to 50% of the tax revenues.
4. The 2013 budget draft predicts 1031.6 billion drams of revenues. We propose to increase them by 50 billion drams, for the following purposes (the justification of which was presented to the government in written)
a. Support for industrial development, addressed abroad – 2 billion drams
b. Support for the drawing and implementation of the settlement project in Mountainous Karabakh – 10 billion drams
c. Integration of Diaspora project – 50 million drams. Increase of funding for the relief of Syrian Armenians that have moved to Armenia and Mountainous Karabakh Republic.
d. State support for farmers’ arable land intended use and purchase of fertilizers, seed and fuel – 4 billion drams.
e. Increase the scientific thematic projects by 100 and raise average salary to 120.000 drams – 1.3 billion drams
f. Planning, exporting and creating distribution networks for innovation projects in the non metal mining field – 0.5 billion dram.
g. Development of the infrastructure in frontline territories – 8 billion drams.
h. Multiplication of the financial assistance for the birth of the third child or more – 8.2 billion drams.
i. Increase of the minimum salary – 16 billion drams.