A proposal to cut down government expenditures
Prime Minister’s statement as of May 12 this year regarding the cut down of the state expenditures and raise the efficiency of expenses is still becoming a cause for new developments. According to our information, tension arose in all ministries, many people are trying to “find an umbrella” not to be dismissed. It is not for the first time that they are trying to increase the efficiency of public expenditure in Armenia and as a result, one or two people are dismissed from their positions and that’s it. Today, the Government of the Republic of Armenia consists of 19 ministries and 7 adjacent agencies. All the ministries together have 60 deputy ministries; the least in the Ministry of international economic integration and reforms – just one deputy; the maximum in the ministries of agriculture and economy: five deputies in each. Perhaps for this very reason, after the Prime Minister’s abovementioned statement-demand, Sergo Karapetyan (Minister of Agriculture) was the first to rush to the Prime Minister with his own list of deductions. Therewith, the Minister of Agriculture has actually accepted that it can work with less staff. And as to why they have put up with the inflated system, he has now explained. Obviously, dismissing one leading specialist of a Department of a Ministry is not a solution to the problem as they are trying to do now. As many service vehicles so many deputy ministers. And purely in math: the reduction of one deputy minister will save more money: salary, assistant-secretary, service car, driver, etc. than the reduction of 3 leading specialists that have no assistant-secretary, a service car and therefore a driver that receive a salary from the state. Why should the minister of nature work with two, the minister of territorial development with three and the minister of economy with five deputies?
Once, when today’s minister of territorial development was the minister of agriculture, he added the number of the deputies by one and noted that it was also possible to work without the new deputy. In fact, the preference was given to the inflated system, like the current minister of agriculture. Six months prior to the Prime Minister’s statement as of 12 May, in November 2015, by the willing of the majority of the Republicans, the number of deputies of the chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia has doubled from one to two. They said that they do not manage to go everywhere. Therewith, they accepted that the professional qualities of the staff of the Central Bank are not primary, there is no specialist to represent the Central Bank. We have already written about overstaffed and overlapped state structures that do not shine with professional qualities: “How to save 100 million drams.”
The salaries in the CBA are not small. The Central Bank does not get money from the state budget but as a result of the powers received from the state, it is fed by these amounts. CB is a structure surviving by the state funds. If the number of deputies of the chairman of the Central Bank is reduced, the efficiency of public expenditures will increase. There is a Department of Diaspora and Bilateral and Multilateral Economic Cooperation Department in the Foreign Ministry of Armenia. Instead of strengthening these departments, a Ministry of Diaspora and a Ministry of International economic integration and reforms were established. People say that if you want to hide something safe, put it in a visible place, everyone will see and not notice. Judging from the Government searches for ways to deduct the public expenditures, the government does not see what is put in front of its eyes: excessive staff of deputies.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
P.S. This publication is a proposal for the reduction of public expenditure, and I have sent it from [email protected] e-mail to Minister-Chief of RA Government Staff, Davit Harutyunyan’s e-mail [email protected], as requested by the Prime Minister.
