Thursday, 24 February 2011
Socially-oriented decisions prevail
A cabinet sitting was held today under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan
The cabinet backed the procedure to follow in extending treasury loans to citizens for customs clearance purposes for such means of transportation imported under the temporary import regime. To this end, the Ministry of Finance was allocated AMD 300mn to be supplemented if necessary. Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan advised to have received a strict presidential assignment to develop a socially-oriented package in order to alleviate the problems faced by our citizens amid the high inflation-dominated post-crisis situation in the country. The government has the duty of assisting the vulnerable, as well as the ones facing temporary hardships.
The meeting endorsed a bill amending the law on temporary disability benefits to cope with the problems faced while granting, calculating and paying out such benefits. The Prime Minister reminded that the government had promised to look into the matter once again with the stakeholders, and that the problem would be settled definitively under the new bill.
The Ministry of Agriculture was allocated AMD 538295.4 thousand to be transferred to Seed Agency SNCO for the procurement of elite spring hybrid barley-corn seeds of first reproduction from abroad. The cabinet next approved a corn production development program which implies import of 63 tons of high-grade corn seeds from abroad for transfer to specialized entities in Armenia. Either the above two decisions were described as socially-oriented by Tigran Sargsyan considering that at this point of time there are some 18.000 program beneficiaries nationwide.
The government invalidated a previous decree to call off the mandatory overhaul requirement for agricultural machinery. According to Tigran Sargsyan, either this decision will be viewed favorably in the countryside because the farmers will no longer have to spend extra time and money on overhaul purposes.
The government decided to recognize as bad and write off such outstanding amounts in irrigation fees as have been accumulated with the water users over time. An order has been established to that effect. In the words of the Prime Minister, this is a strong support for our water users and may address a serious welfare problem. However, the decision will not affect the running arrears.
The government decided to set up a spiritual-cultural public TV company closed joint stock company with 100000 dram statutory capital corresponding to 100 ordinary shares of AMD 1000 nominal value. The Public TV and Radio Company Board will be entrusted with the management of the public stake. The 2011 company budget will be covered under the TV Services program of this year’s State budget to the level of AMD 73245400. The head of government noted in this connection that the matter had been repeatedly raised on the part of scholars and intellectuals. From now on, the TV channel will be allowed to exercise a scheduling policy of its own to the benefit of all the layers of domestic TV viewers.
In conclusion, the meeting decided to replace the March 7, 2011 working day with the March 12 Saturday.
