Healthcare Institutions Have Not Paid Salaries Due to Lack of Funding: Torosyan to Minister

Arsen Torosyan, a member of the Armenian National Assembly from the ruling Civil Contract party and former Minister of Health, questioned the Minister of Finance about the approximately 3 billion AMD debts owed to healthcare institutions in exchange for state orders. "The Minister, of course, mentioned that this debt will be financed by the end of the year, but the expenses of medical institutions are monthly. A bad situation may arise (this has been ongoing since last year), where medical institutions have not paid salaries on time due to lack of funding. Such situations occurred last year as well, where there were delays of one to three months, and then directors were fined heavily by regulatory bodies for not paying salaries, although they couldn't provide them due to lack of funding," he said.

Finance Minister Vahe Hovhannisyan noted that they have informed about the risks involved. "We have informed that there may be risks, but our partners have predicted based on large data that significant deviations will not occur. The deviations that are currently observed, which prompted us to allocate additional funds, are not large compared to those volumes; they are allowable deviations. However, we must look at our capabilities to understand how this system should operate to prevent unexpected financial obligations from arising for us," the Minister elaborated.

"You say it’s not large, but if the amount corresponds to about 10% of a healthcare institution's turnover for a period of 5 months (in one case, 250 million, 300 million, 130 million), that is a significant figure," responded Arsen Torosyan.