Minister of Diaspora Mkhitar Hayrapetyan writes:

“Continuing the study of the financial issues of the RA Ministry of Diaspora, I looked through the budget line “Article on Television Broadcasting, Publications, and Videos on Armenia-Diaspora Partnership” for the first five months of 2018, where I saw a number of remarkable figures and data.

In particular, this year, the Ministry of Diaspora issued an order of 40 news articles from six news outlets, for which they paid 1 million 260,000 AMD, ie an average of 31,500 AMD per article. In general, this year it was planned to spend 4 million 300 thousand drams. Looking at all those articles, I can state that they could be used as a press release, as a result of which the information would be found in most mass media and would provide a much larger audience.

As for the content, you can definitely say what is in the articles you read on my Facebook daily summaries. For a better idea, please see a specific example. Let’s say that today I have received the ambassador of any country, and this news is presented only in 2 paragraphs and we pay 31,500 AMD. Thus, for something that could be done with the resources of the Ministry of Diaspora, without paying any additional sum, Armenia’s taxpayers had paid than 1 million AMD, and only for the first five months of the current year.

I declare that we immediately stop this unacceptable and non-professional practice. And as a result only in 2018 we shall return to the state budget 3 million 40 thousand AMD. I want to emphasize that our problem is not with the media, but the problem is the state budget exhaustion and the inefficient use of cash, which is against the philosophy and principles of our work.”