Governor of Aragatsotn Marz Ashot Simonyan reported to Karen Karapetyan the status of those assignments issued by the Prime Minister during the consultation held on September 9 in Aragatsotn Marz of Armenia.
The Governor reported that according to Prime Minister’s instruction, efforts had been made to raise the level communities’ own revenues. The local administration is set to collect 1,254 million drams in own revenue in 2017, which is 114 million drams or 23% up the index of 2016. Ashot Simonyan assured that the revenue collection target will be met by 100%, adding that the amount of own revenue will be increased by 20-25% in 2018. Regarding the ongoing construction projects, the Governor advised that construction activities worth 27, 300 million drams were implemented during the first 10 months of 2017, of which 9,600 million was invested under the North-South Highway Project. This figure will reach the mark of 12.5 billion drams by yearend. A total of 30 billion drams will be invested in the Marz in 2017.
The health sector’s annual budget is estimated at AMD 1,573 million. 114 million drams in receipts from paid services were envisaged at the beginning of the year, but the proceeds are due to be increased to 34 million drams from this July. Ashot Simonyan said they were planning to raise the proceeds from paid services up to 200 million drams in 2018.
Coming to investment programs, the Governor noted that over than 10 investment projects had been submitted to the Government, some of which have already been completed, while others are in progress. The projects feature construction of a solar power plant, a poultry farm and a greenhouse facility, as well as pig-breeding, winemaking, diamond processing and other activities. 200-300 new jobs with an average salary of 200-300 thousand drams will be provided with the re-commissioning of the diamond processing plant in Talin. About 1000 new jobs will be made available in the Marz owing to the aforementioned programs.
The following indicators have been recorded in the field of waste management: 136 landfills and garbage dumps have been explored and mapped, of which 124 have already been shut down. The local communities spent 62 million drams for garbage collectio.n purposes, 36 million of which were collected from individuals and legal entities. 140-145 million drams will be needed to meet the sanitary cleaning and garbage disposal requirements in 2018.
The Governor assured that these funds will be raised from rental fees that will help them become self-sufficient and avoid placing additional burden on communities’ own budgets.