The Prime Minister’s Office has issued a clarification, which reads:

“In connection with the statement made by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the 6 April Facebook press conference, according to which the total fund for the awarding of high-ranking officials is 1 billion drams, manipulative comments and information are presented by various people.

We emphasize once again that the Prime Minister spoke only about the bonuses of high-ranking officials, and not about the employees of the general public administration system.

As it is known, since last year, the state budget has provided 30% of the salaries of all the ministries and departments, which are allocated to all representatives of the public administration system, from the lowest-ranking officials to high-ranking officials. In other words, the bonuses are provided to thousands of our citizens. In general, yes, the bonus fund in the public administration system is more than 25 billion drams a year, of which only a small part is directed to the awarding of high-ranking officials – ministers, deputy ministers and general secretaries.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly publicly stated his position on these issues and announced a political course, saying that the Minister should not be accused of receiving many times more salary than a pensioner, as the level of further welfare of the pensioner depends on the quality of the minister’s work.

It should be reminded that during the last year and a half after the revolution, salaries, pensions and benefits of hundreds of thousands of citizens in Armenia have been increased, and the process continues.

We urge to refrain from manipulative comments and providing false information on these and other issues.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister stressed live that by his decision, high-ranking state officials had not received any bonuses for March.

However, referring to the increase in salaries of high-ranking state officials, the Prime Minister reminded that in the past, as an opposition figure, he described the increase in salaries of state officials the bonuses as cynicism, because all these officials were given the privilege of making money through bribes, sponsorship, and other corrupt levers, and in fact plundering the country. “Currently there is a serious issue raised for the public administration system, and everyone knows that they will be punished if they get involved in corruption. Due to the efficiency of the work of high-ranking officials, it was also became possible to increase the salaries, pensions and benefits of 1 million 90 thousand people, to increase the revenues of the state budget of Armenia by 1 billion 100 million dollars since 2018.

I think we need to raise the profile of an honest, fair public service now. There should be a continuous increase in salaries in the public administration system, because many problems are not solved for the simple reason that it is often impossible to involve people with the necessary professional skills in the public administration system,” Nikol Pashinyan said.