ArmInfo.The Government of Armenia intends to redistribute up to 6% of budget funds in order to provide adequate assistance to forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh. An extraordinary meeting of Armenia's Parliament is discussing amendments to the law "On the Budget System".
According to Deputy Minister of Finance of the Republic of Armenia Vahan Sirunyan, currently the government of the republic can redistribute up to 3% of the total amount of allocations for the implementation of various programs approved by the law on the state budget of 2023. However, taking into account the current situation, when at the end of September over 100 thousand people were forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and in the presence of a large group of people who were unable to return to their homeland as a result of the illegal blockade of the Lachin corridor, the RA government took steps to solve their problems.
In this regard, there was a need to redistribute budget resources, which would lead to exceeding the established limit of 3%. It is proposed, in particular, to increase the volume of redistribution to 6%, since the necessary funds were not provided for in advance in the country's budget for the current year. It is planned that budget resources will be reduced for those programs for which there is under-fulfillment.
The Deputy Minister noted that according to the current situation, AMD 20bln have already been allocated for the needs of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, which is slightly more than 1% of all budget expenditures. The total expenses approved by the state budget law amount to about AMD 78bln. As of November 2, the amount redistributed by decisions of the Government of the Republic of Armenia amounted to AMD 74bln, which is already equal to about 2.85% of state budget expenditures, however, to implement other programs it is necessary to increase the redistribution ceiling to 6%. Thanks to the changes proposed by the project, the RA government will be given the opportunity to redistribute another AMD 77.7bln.