People Should Step Out of the 'Bud-Aragh-Haravani Tun' Frameworks: Hakob Karapetyan

Hakob Karapetyan, the spokesperson for the Mayor of Yerevan, made a post on his Facebook page, responding to the criticisms aimed at the city hall regarding New Year expenditures.

“We are smoothly transitioning from the themes of 'KAMAZ trucks' and 'sheikhs' to the topic of New Year expenditures. Perhaps there are legitimate questions regarding the spending of $700,000 for organizing the holiday, but first, let’s understand what we want from ourselves and what we want for this city in general. If we say that people should feel good in Yerevan during the holidays, step out of the frameworks of 'Bud-Aragh-Haravani Tun' and try to celebrate the New Year on a city-wide scale, we must change our attitude towards expenditures.

Especially, if we want to be an attractive destination for tourists, we need to try to surprise those tourists, impress them such that they would want to return. And for this, investments need to be made, just as they do in Tbilisi, which is loved by Armenian tourists. This year, their New Year expenses amounted to 2.8 million lari or about 1,000,000 USD. Last year, when we discussed Yerevan's $140,000 Christmas tree, Tbilisi spent $775,000 on new holiday lighting (link in the comments). Based on the enthusiastic reactions from various magazines and tourists, that expenditure was fully justified.

In short, this is not just an expense, but an investment. Moreover, the New Year show in Yerevan is going to be very grand indeed.

P.S. by the way, the city's New Year budget has remained unchanged compared to last year, at 54 million drams. The remainder has been allocated by the Government,” he wrote.