The regular Cabinet meeting took place yesterday, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan.
The Government adopted a decision by which it is planned to allocate 300 million AMD for the implementation of the support program for the affected businessmen in the disaster zone. The event is proposed to be added to the “Knowledge-based innovative economy and small and medium entrepreneurship support” program of the Ministry of Economy. The number of beneficiaries is around 150.
As noted by Minister of Economy Gevorg Papoyan, the range of affected businessmen of Lori and Tavush regions and the scope of damage caused during this period were inventoried by the republican commission assessing the damages caused to individuals and legal entities as a result of emergency situations. The Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure presented the lists of economic operators who suffered losses due to precipitation, the information on the economic activity of economic operators was presented by the SRC, and the information on the extent of the damage was presented by the Urban Development Committee. According to the minister, three levels of damage suffered by businessmen were segregated: low, medium and high.
The Government agreed to the proposal to increase the number of judges specializing in criminal cases of the courts of general jurisdiction of the first instance by 8. According to the substantiation, as a result of the amendment made to the Criminal Procedure Code, an increase in the workload of the courts is expected, which will result in the need to increase the number of judges.
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The Government made changes and additions to one of the previously adopted decisions, which approved the implementation of the public-private partnership (PPP) project on the infrastructure and services for the provision of biometric passports and identification cards in the Republic of Armenia. As the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Arpine Sargsyan noted, this agenda item logically summarizes the last stage of the competition for providing biometric passports and identification cards to Armenian citizens in a new format within the framework of public-private partnership. After the government’s approval, on October 8, the evaluation committee will approve the full specifications of the RFP.
“We will publish this information on October 10, after that the participants will have the opportunity to submit their applications. And applicants have the opportunity to submit applications until January 10, 2025. Starting from January 11th, we will already start the actual evaluation process by the evaluation committee and basically we will have 80 days to be able to summarize the complete data. We will evaluate two components: quality and price,” said the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, adding that priority will be given to quality. By the end of March 2025, there will be a confirmed winning company based on the submitted proposals, and the latter will be given a period to introduce the infrastructure and start production.
According to Arpine Sargsyan, from a practical point of view, the biometric passport will provide a high standard in terms of personal identification, which will allow to communicate with other states as well.
The government adopted a decision, which plans to redistribute the funds allocated by the state budget 2024 to the Ecopatrol Service of the Ministry of Environment and to allocate money in the amount of 509 million 512 thousand AMD to the expansion of the technical capabilities of Syunik Regional Department. Deputy Environment Minister Tigran Gabrielyan noted that the money will be used to purchase 22 operational vehicles for the Kapan, Syunik, Sisian and “Zangezur Biosphere Complex” divisions of the Syunik Regional Department, and equip them with a mobile system and other types of special equipment.