Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, via a video link, participated in discussions today, launched by the Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs of the National Assembly. regarding the state budget.

Pashinyan, who tested positive for Covid-19 last week, has been self-isolating at home.

Pashinyan said 2019 was a historic year in terms of the budget.

"After all, the government managed to generate 104 billion drams more tax revenue than planned, of which 62 billion drams became state budget revenues, and 42 billion drams was returned to VAT debt. In 2019, an unprecedented economic growth of 7.6% was registered for the last 12 years. We had a tax-to-GDP ratio of 22.35%, which is 1.6 percentage points higher than the planned index,” Pashinyan said.

Turning to the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis, Pashinyan said while the country would be facing several problems it’s too early to make specific predictions.

“We still don’t know how long the pandemic will last to summarize the results and losses,” he said.