Parliamentary Committee Postpones Discussion on Minimum Wage Changes

The discussion on the draft law “On Minimum Wage” was postponed in the National Assembly's Committee on Health and Social Issues. The proposed amendment suggests increasing the minimum monthly wage from 55,000 drams to 63,000 drams. The co-authors of the project are lawmakers Varazdat Karapetyan, Babken Tunyan, and Narek Zeynalyan from the My Step faction.

According to Varazdat Karapetyan, their studies have shown that 8,400 people in the government apparatus receive the minimum wage, 6,000 in non-commercial community organizations (HCO), and 30,000 in the private sector. It is worth noting that the government approved a draft amendment to the law on minimum wage during its meeting on June 27, proposing a minimum wage of 68,000 drams instead of 63,000 drams as suggested by the lawmakers.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Vache Gabrielyan identified risks in the government’s proposal and presented justifications in his article. Babken Tunyan, the chairman of the Committee on Economic Issues, thanked Gabrielyan on his Facebook page for his “in-depth, professional, and extremely useful analysis” and expressed hope that Gabrielyan would find time to participate in the discussion of the draft in the main parliamentary committee.

“We proposed 63,000 drams considering the circumstances to ensure it does not affect the basic structure of the public system. We have a regulation under the law on the remuneration of public servants, according to which their salaries are linked to the basic calculation of the minimum wage, so to avoid impacting public servants we suggested 63,000 drams,” said Karapetyan, emphasizing the need to prevent an increase in public servants' salaries due to the rise in minimum wage.

Karapetyan reminded that the government suggests setting the minimum wage at 68,000 drams. The lawmaker proposed to present the justifications from the government representative present in the meeting on how this would be implemented. Deputy Minister of Social Affairs Arman Udumyan stated that they have a clear methodology that connects it with the growth of the GDP or the relation between minimum and average wages. However, the deputy minister suggested postponing the discussion as new data has emerged that require examination.

Committee Chairman Narek Zeynalyan announced that the discussion would be postponed for a maximum of two months.