Some react nervously to my statements that people’s lives have improved by approximately 50 percent. On July 27, more than 50,000 people were vacationing on the shores of Lake Sevan, the overwhelming majority of whom were from Yerevan and nine other regions. Traveling to Sevan with the family entails significant expenses. Where do these expenses come from, and why wasn’t this done on such a large scale before? Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote this on his Facebook page.
“In Yerevan’s restaurants and those in other cities, there is no place to sit. Until recently, going to a restaurant was a luxury, an unattainable luxury. Today, restaurants and cafes are growing like mushrooms after the rain in Armenia, and visiting these restaurants and cafes is an expense. Where do these expenses come from, and why wasn’t this done on such a scale before? Moreover, the old anxiety of going to a restaurant with the family has completely disappeared because restaurants and cafes have long ceased to be the domain of criminals.
People complain about the queues for tourist visas to EU countries, which sometimes stretch for 6-7 months. The very process of obtaining a visa is an expense, not to mention vacationing in European countries. Since 2018, trips by Armenians to EU countries have grown exponentially. Do you understand? Exponentially. Every trip is an expense, significant and tangible. So where do these expenses come from, and why was this not so widespread before?
Yes, there is dissatisfaction with the fact that one could pay 50 percent of the established taxes by law, give the remaining 25 percent to various officials, and keep the rest for themselves… and spend it on replacing car parts broken in potholes, purchasing airline tickets, which were four times more expensive, on the consequences of raising children on the streets due to the lack of kindergartens, healthcare expenses, and so on.
Sorry, but this complaint is absolutely unacceptable because the well-being of a citizen depends not so much on how much money they spend on their well-being, but on how much local and state budgets spend on the well-being of citizens. And the fact that this formula works became evident on July 27, at Vardavar,” wrote the Prime Minister.
Earlier, the Prime Minister wrote that the number of people in public spaces was only this high during the “velvet revolution.”
