YEREVAN, MARCH 13, NOYAN TAPAN. At the March 12 sitting, the Armenian government approved the package of protocol decisions on redistribution of the 2009 state budget. The RA minister of finance Tigran Davtian said at a briefing after the sitting that the purpose of adopting the package is to give a more adequate response to the nonpositive developments in Armenia as a result of the global economic crisis. In his words, the global economy has entered a stage of decline, and naturally, it has had a negative impact on Armenia's economy. T. Davtian said that the government has tools for an adequate response to the events. Based on that, the government is adopting the quarterly principles of budget planning. "The budget legislation is quite flexible and provides good opportunities to respond quickly to some or another change in the situation," the minister of finance underlined. T. Davtian noted that the social expenditures: benefits, pensions, salaries, which make up 25% of the state budget, are not subject to revision. These expenditures will be incurred by the envisaged schedule. The most important socioeconomic programs envisaged by the budget will not be subjected to redistribution either. The expenditures considered as not urgent, in particular the purchase of property and vehicles, will be transferred from the 1st quarter to the 4th one. Expenses on the state government system and business trips will be reduced. "At this moment it is difficult to predict how the global developments will proceed and, depanding on that, what dynamics our economy will have until late 2009. So we transfer the expenditures based on collection of risky revenues to the end of the year," T. Davtian stated, adding the step of revising the expenditures will enable to make the budget more predictable. "This decision is related to redistribution of expenses rather than to their reduction," the minister stressed. At the same time it was mentioned that the risk amount regarding revenues is assessed at about 131 billion drams.

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