The Armenian government has approved a package of five measures to offset the economic impact of the new coronavirus.
The comprehensive package is aimed at mitigating the risks associated with anticipated current liquidity among business entities, ensuring sustainable economic development, identifying and assisting groups that have lost jobs due to coronavirus, providing socially insecure, socially vulnerable groups with social security and supporting their families, upgrading the healthcare system.
The first measure is meant to assists individual economic entities through co-financing, refinancing of loans and interest rate subsidies. Only one form of assistance will be applicable for each economic entity. It will give entrepreneurs time to respond to changing demand conditions, and therefore continue to operate or to adapt to a changing economic situation, as well as make adjustments to development strategies.
The second measure proposes to change the amount of subsidies and apply co-financing to agricultural programs.
The third measure proposes to assist the economic entities with AMD 24-500 million annual turnover in 2019 by ensuring loans and subsidizing interest rates.
The fourth measure aims to assist families with children under 14 that face social problems because of the difficulties on the labor market caused by the spread of the coronavirus. The program envisages a lump sum allowance of 100,000 drams.
The fifth measure is intended to assist entities in ensuring the continuity of their activities by maintaining effective jobs. The program will be targeted at those entities (except banks, credit organizations, pawnshops and insurance companies, foreign currency exchanges, securities trading organizations, investment organizations, investment funds, lotteries and gambling organizations, etc.01), which have permanently had two to fifty hired employees between January 1, 2020 and April 1, 2020, and the actual payroll of the company has not decreased during the specified period.
