Thursday, 6 February 2014
Issues Of Public Concern In Spotlight
A Cabinet sitting was held today, chaired by Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.
Opening the meeting, the Prime Minister referred to a number of issues of public concern. Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Territorial Administration Armen Gevorgyan reported on the situation in the city of Vanadzor: “A few days ago a major accident occurred on the gas-main leading to Vanadzor, and the service company suspended the supply for safety considerations. As a result, heating-related problems were faced not only in apartment buildings, but also in enterprises and institutions. At this point, some heating problems are still available in the maternity hospital, where work is going on to replace several sections of the heating system. “Hayjermough” is aware of the problem. The Governor, the Mayor and the community organizations are working in this direction. I hope that we will not have any such problems ahead, and all the local institutions may return to normality within 1-2 days.”
The Prime Minister told Armen Gevorgyan to keep the issue under his personal control and take all the necessary measures in order to ensure normal living and working conditions for the population as shortly as possible.
The second issue addressed by the Prime Minister had to do with the Customs Union: “Some media outlets are trying to spread such information, which in my opinion, does not keep with the facts. Namely, they keep claiming that the accession to the Customs Union may lead to unprecedented inflation.”
The matter was taken up by Minister of Economy Vahram Avanesyan: “The estimates produced by some media are not true to fact in any way. The information circulated consists in that Armenia is going to face a huge inflation after joining the Customs Union. It is not true at all. Our estimates were made as early as some 6-7 months ago: the inflationary pressure can reach 1.5 percent in the worst of the scenarios, and we cannot have inflation higher than that.”
As a third issue, the Premier announced the launch of a new program. “You may remember that we worked together long enough to tackle the civil servants’ housing problems. We managed to complete the preparatory work and today we are announcing the launch of the program. At this point, 3500 public servants have wished to benefit from the program so that in a short period of time we can offer them about 1,000 apartments along with a mortgage security. I think that this is going to be an important incentive for our public servants.”
The government approved the 2014 State support programs for the spring sowing campaign to boost the production of barley, corn, alfalfa and sweet clover, offer land users affordable nitric, phosphoric, potassic fertilizers and diesel fuel.
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan especially stressed that the land users will be safe from price hikes this year thanks to these programs.
The government redistributed the State budget, amended an earlier decree, conditioned by the construction of Vazashen-Paravakar 3.2km-long alternative motor road of strategic importance. AMD535mn was allocated for construction, design, technical and author’s supervision purposes.
Learning from the Minister of Transport and Communications that the road could be put into operation before this summer, the Prime Minister stressed the need to expedite work, taking advantage of favorable weather.
A 792 million 386 thousand 600 dram-worth budget loan with 15 years’ payback period was made available to Radioisotope Production Center CJSC, which is part of the Armenian Center of Excellence in Oncology, with a view to building internal and external engineering systems, implementing interior design work and ensuring technical control.
The Head of Government emphasized that the Oncology Center’s business plan is being carried out with considerable savings. Originally, it was decided that a loan of 3.5million U.S. dollars had to be extended under the program, but a lot less money is being provided now.
Either the loan available from the Belgian government is a significant economy. The cyclotron is already in Armenia, which means that the construction may record serious progress during the year.
The meeting agenda featured some 4 dozen items altogether.
