Karapetyan Clarifies Officials' Salary Increase Issue

The spokesperson for the Prime Minister of Armenia, Vladimir Karapetyan, has clarified the issue regarding the salary increases for high-ranking officials. Karapetyan stated on his Facebook page, "Last year, following the so-called 'bonus scandal,' Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan clearly defended the system of proper remuneration for high-ranking officials. After extensive public discussions, the Prime Minister decided to regulate the bonus system to exclude the uncomfortable situation where public officials grant bonuses to themselves based on their subjective decisions and 'eyeballing.'

For this purpose, the following important decisions have been made:

• a) A fund for bonuses has been established for all ministries and agencies, equating to 30% of that agency's salary fund.
• b) Monthly bonus amounts for ministers, governors, and heads of agencies have been determined, according to which a minister’s monthly salary plus bonus amounts to 1.5 million drams, the deputy ministers’ 1 million drams, and governors’ 900,000 drams.

The document was circulated under a 'confidential' stamp due to purely internal procedures. This is also why there has been no additional public communication regarding this matter since the Prime Minister has previously announced his stance on these issues and declared a political course, also stating that ministers should not be blamed for receiving salaries many times higher than retirees, as the quality of the minister’s work depends on the future well-being of the retiree.

It is also worth mentioning that in the past year and a half, numerous salary, pension, and benefit increases have taken place for many citizens in Armenia, and this process continues. By 2020, salaries for hundreds of thousands of citizens in Armenia will be raised, following the revolution.

We also consider the accusations that this process has occurred secretly as absurd. Firstly, as I noted earlier, the 'bonus scandal' that began at the start of this year has seen the Prime Minister clearly state his position, and in addition, all ministers fill out declarations at the end of the year, which are posted online and accessible to any citizen 24 hours a day, making it impossible to quietly raise any minister's salary.

Additionally, it is particularly perplexing to see the critical positions of some party leaders. Let those figures who were once part of governing coalitions say how much money was given in envelopes to the ministers they represented in the government, whether it was done secretly or publicly, and how legal those payments were, and whether the ministers who received envelope money paid income tax on those payments in accordance with the law."