No One in Artsakh Spends Those Funds for Pleasure, Says Metakse Hakobyan to Pashinyan

Funds allocated from the Armenian state budget are not spent on pleasure in Artsakh, stated Metakse Hakobyan, a member of the Artsakh National Assembly, during a conversation with reporters. This remark was in response to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's statement that Artsakh has never had a larger budget than it currently does, which was formed from taxes paid by the people of Armenia. Sputnik Armenia reports.

It is noteworthy that during the preliminary discussions of the annual report on the implementation of the state budget for 2021 at the National Assembly, PM Pashinyan mentioned that programs worth 136 billion AMD have been implemented in Artsakh since November 2020, with 120 billion of that in 2021.

“Nikol Pashinyan came to power with the agenda of making the country prosperous, developing the economy, and eliminating poverty. However, today we see that despair prevails in the country, and against this backdrop, to announce that an unprecedented budget is being allocated to Artsakh is unacceptable,” said Hakobyan. She urged all citizens who are upset about this fact to go to Artsakh and see how people live there.

“We return that budget to him and his family with love because with that budget, we must build brotherly cemeteries and homes for our 40,000-plus residents. No one in Artsakh spends that money on pleasure,” asserted Hakobyan.

She emphasized that today, people have returned to Artsakh not to live well but to protect their homeland and prevent its capture by the enemy. “What family that has lost a child should be uplifted by material support? Should they be happy? They can barely prepare their child's grave. What kind of unprecedented financial support are we talking about? Even if less money was given to Artsakh before 2018, the people of Artsakh smiled and never complained,” said the representative.

Additionally, it was mentioned that yesterday in the National Assembly, Pashinyan noted that the highest budget in Artsakh was 117.9 billion AMD in 2019, of which 57.8 billion was paid from the Armenian budget. In 2021, the revenue of the Artsakh budget was 174 billion AMD, of which 128 billion was provided by Armenia. As a result, according to Pashinyan, pensions and benefits in Artsakh increased by 20 percent in 2022. State programs in Artsakh continue this year as well, with the budget allocation planned at 144 billion AMD for 2022, along with an additional 30 billion AMD for housing construction in the region.