Government does not have 300 billion AMD free balance: finance minister

The state does not have 300 billion free balance, Armenia’s minister of finance Atom Janjughazyan said at the NA today in response to My Step deputy Babken Tunyan’s question who said that according to the claims of the opposition the state has 300 billion free balance and part of it may be provided to the people as assistance. Tunyan asked why having these funds they are offering 150 billion assistance package on the account of budget.

“I am not sure that I fully understand what 300 billion AMD it is being spoken about, but I may suppose that it is the balance of the treasury’s united account for which we were criticized last year before the outbreak of the pandemic,” he said.

“If you are talking about it, I must note that these are not free funds and we have already presented clarifications about it,” he said, reminding that the united treasury united all the funds belonging to the state and communities since 1996 for the turnover of the means belonging to the state and the communities which does not mean that these are free means and may be used at any moment for any reason.

The Bright Armenia faction offered yesterday to envisage 100 billion AMD for the assistance, using 50 billion AMD for providing 100,000 AMD to each family and using the other 50 billion for additional pensions to 470,000 pensioners.