A planned pay rise in Armenia will cover not only the country’s top officials but also about 20,000 employees across the state system, according to Taron Chakhoyan, a lawmaker from the ruling Civil Contract faction. He made the remarks on September 22 during a briefing at the National Assembly.
Chakhoyan said public debate has wrongly focused on salary increases for the prime minister, cabinet members and MPs alone. He argued that the changes also apply to multiple layers of the civil service, from first-class specialists and senior specialists to department heads and deputy ministers.
He said there are clear imbalances in the public pay structure. In his words, a deputy minister’s salary cannot be higher than a minister’s, which is why the compensation of higher-ranking officials also needs to be revised. While the top tier of government involves around 200 people, he said, the overall pay rise is designed for 20,000 employees.
Chakhoyan also pointed to competition from the private sector. He said some companies in the country pay their directors as much as 20 million drams a month, making it difficult to attract qualified professionals into public office when a deputy minister earns 1 million drams.
Eduard Aghajanyan, another lawmaker from the same ruling faction, said the issue should also be viewed in connection with corruption risks. According to him, countries with low official salaries tend to face higher levels of corruption. He cited Singapore as an example, saying high pay for officials there has gone hand in hand with a very low level of corruption.
Aghajanyan added that the state system is facing a noticeable outflow of qualified staff, with uncompetitive wages among the main reasons.
Under proposed amendments to the law on remuneration of persons holding public office, the salary of Armenia’s prime minister would rise by almost 80%. It currently stands at 1 million 498 thousand drams, calculated as the base pay rate for civil servants multiplied by a coefficient of 18. The draft law would raise that coefficient to 32, increasing the salary to 2 million 662 thousand drams.
The same bill would align the president’s salary with that of the prime minister, with the president’s coefficient also rising from 20 to 32. Ministers’ salaries would double to 1 million 997 thousand drams. Significant increases are also planned for other levels of the public service hierarchy.
Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan said while presenting the bill that it would continue the civil service pay reform launched last year. Territorial Administration Minister Davit Khudatyan said the salaries of mayors and municipal heads, now averaging 350 thousand drams, would double and in some cases triple.
He said wage supplements for municipal employees would be financed from the republican budget rather than municipal budgets. The project is expected to require 25 billion drams a year from the state budget.
