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On December 7, the Parliament continued the debate of the draft law on RA State Budget for 2023 at the NA sitting. Certain amendments were made to the revised version, which were mainly related to the expenditures and revenues.

According to the draft, the expenditures of the state budget for 2023 will be 2 trillion 591 billion AMD, and the revenues – 2 trillion 302 billion AMD. The deficit will be 289 billion AMD. Compared to the previous draft submitted to the National Assembly, budget expenditures increased by 826 million AMD, revenues increased by 734.5 million AMD, amounting to 2 trillion 302 billion AMD. Tax revenues have not changed, amounting to to 2 trillion 203.7 billion AMD. Revenues increased at the expense of other revenues and official grants. The deficit of the state budget remained unchanged.

Tigran Khachatryan informed that the amendments to the state budget draft for 2023 are due to several reasons. First, the dram equivalents of foreign currency operations will be at the exchange rate of November 1, this recalculation caused adjustments in the dram equivalents of state budget revenues, expenditures, as well as deficit. The second reason is that program coordinators revised the documentary justifications related to certain programs, as a result of which the budget funds allocated to such programs increased in some cases. The funds of the reserve fund of the Government defined by the 2023 state budget were reduced by the amount of increased budget funds for individual programs.

According to the Minister, the increase in expenditures is due to the increase in interest payments, amounting to 826 million AMD. The sum of primary current expenditures, as well as capital expenditures, remained unchanged. The total expenditures were reduced by 4.1 billion AMD as a result of the recalculation of foreign currency exchange rates. According to the recommendations of the sectoral expenditure officers, the funds allocated to individual expenditure directions increased by 27.2 billion AMD, the reserve fund of the Government decreased by 22.3 billion AMD due to the financing allocated to them.

The amount of credit support allocated to Nagorno-Karabakh will be 136 billion AMD in 2023. According to the initial draft, it was planned to allocate 144 billion AMD to Nagorno-Karabakh, but as a result of the application of the Government of Nagorno-Karabakh, 8 billion AMD will be allocated earlier, in the current year.

The Minister informed that the Government received 45 proposals from the deputies. Some of them were accepted.

Summarizing his speech, the Minister emphasized that the fiscal policy will give higher reliability to the macroeconomic environment, tax revenues will continue to grow in line with the five-year goals set by the Government's Programme, the increase in defense spending will allow to improve border protection significantly, there will be sufficient financial allocations in the economic, educational, health and social spheres to continue the started reforms. The state budget deficit will remain within the range of reliable management and will contribute to the reduction of macroeconomic risks caused by the state debt, the state debt will return to a qualitatively new range, not exceeding 50% of the gross domestic product, and will increase confidence in the creditworthiness of the Government. The strategic basis of budget programs will increase the visibility of the link with the goals of the Government Programme, and budget programs will become more effective and provide greater public benefits.