Government of Armenia approves state budget 2016 update

ArmInfo. The Government passed a resolution on amendments to the 2016 State budget bill, particularly a package of modifications to the indicators specified in the draft budget law, which was submitted to the National Assembly on 2 October, 2016, as well as the summary of the proposals formulated by the National Assembly Standing Committees, parliamentary groups and factions and individual MPs. Note that some 60 items or 18.6 percent of those 322 recommendations submitted by the aforementioned parties have already been approved by the Government, the Government press-office said.

Considering only those recommendations featuring exact amounts of money, it was proposed to complement the Bill's revenue and expenditure sides by about 15 billion and 14.3 billion drams respectively.

Additional expenses to the social, cultural and educational sectors will total 9.4bln drams.  The Government made its own suggestions and adopted a decision to increase revenues by 2 bln drams, including 1.2bln drams through grants. As a consequence, the updated draft budget 2016 suggests increasing revenues by 3.246bln drams. The expenditures will be increased too.  As a result of re-calculation of pupils, spending on the education will be reduced by some 2 billion drms and by 1.4 billion drams basing on the currency recalculation.  Service of the government treasury bonds will total 1.8bln drams, assistance to municipal authorities - 1.17bln drams, government staff - 0.9bln drams and other sectors 2.7bln drams.  The amount of the loans will be reduced, including World Bank loans -  by 577mln drams, Asian Development Bank loan - by 289mln, and Eurasian Development Bank  - by 962 mln drams. 

In the final draft budget expenditures will total 1 trillion 377 billion AMD, and revenues - 1 trillion 186.3 billion AMD, with the deficit being 197 bln AMD. The taxes to GDP ratio will total 20.74%.