The past year’s consistent coverage of Iravaban.net showed that as a rule, ministers prefer the “Business” class tickets, which are at least twice as expensive from “Economy” class.
However, since 19 December, Minister – Chief of the RA Government Staff Davit Harutyunyan stated that definite efforts are made in the direction to change the travel policies and it was believed that this year from February to March a centralized system for ordering tickets would be introduced..
According to the new policy, all the employees of the state structures should travel by the “Economy” class, moreover the cheapest ticket which do not imply a return or change the term would be.
The ministers will also need to travel “economy” class airline tickets, and only Security Council members will travel by “Business” class tickets.
February is already over, the first decade of March is coming to an end, but there is still no news of new regulations processing ticket purchase. The Government agencies continue buying “Business” class tickets.
For example, on 26 February, Armenian Defense Ministry bought 6 tickets for the flight Yerevan-Moscow-Brussels-Moscow-Yerevan, one of which 1 “Business” class and 5 “Economy” class.
It is interesting that the cost of 1 “Business” class ticket was 1.035 million AMD, while for 5 “Economy” class tickets 1.24 million AMD was paid. This means that the cost of 1 “Economy” class ticket is 245 thousand AMD.
That is, in this case, the “Business” class ticket costs 4 times more expensive t\for the state budget․
Astghik Karapetyan
