With the presentation of the RA Minister of Finance Vardan Aramyan, the Executive has approved the Draft State Budget of the Republic of Armenia for 2018. The RA Minister of Finance was instructed to make amendments to the Draft and submit it to the RA Government Staff if necessary, whence the revised version of the Draft will be submitted to the RA National Assembly in a prescribed manner.
The RA Minister of Finance Vardan Aramyan mentioned that the budget for the next year in terms of revenues will amount to AMD 1 trillion 307 billion instead of 1 trillion 207 billion in 2017 - 100 billion more at the expense of tax revenues. Budget expenditure part is envisaged to be AMD 1 trillion 464 billion, and the deficit - about AMD 157 billion.
“Taking into account the forecasts, we have increased the index of growth. In 2017, it was fixed 3.2 percent growth, but considering the fact that the indicator of economic activeness is high, we expect that in this year the economic growth will be between 4 - 4,8 percent. Based on this, we have raised the existing expectations up to 4.3 percent growth. For the next year, we forecast an economic growth of 4.5 percent”, - noted the Minister.
Vardan Aramyan highlighted that for 2018, capital and defense expenditures have been increased.
Touching upon the news in the press regarding sequestration, Vadan Aramyan also noted that the RA Government is not discussing such an issue. “There is nothing like that at all. We have a very clear ideology which we have fixed in the Draft Budget for 2017 and we will continue the same behaviour in 2018 as well. By the way, the international institutions, including the rating organizations, against the background of rising debt, have maintained our rating and highly assessed the budgetary policy for 2017 and the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework approved in July as well”, - said the RA Finance Minister and added that through its partners, the Government basically managed to demonstrate conservative behaviour in terms of current expenditure growth.
Source: gov.am