The government will distribute 4.6 billion drams, or over $12 million, in bonuses to civil servants by mid-year. While 3.6 billion drams were allocated for bonuses based on the first half of 2025, their performance in the second half of the year was assessed even higher in the run-up to the elections, and the government increased the amount by one billion.
The decision was unanimously adopted today by Pashinyan’s cabinet. The government will allocate 4.6 billion from the reserve fund, and employees will receive bonuses before the elections.
Varujan Khoktanyan, an anti-corruption expert at the Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center, sees the new incentive program leading up to the elections as a risk of political corruption. “All this is happening on the eve of elections, and that’s a completely different story, because, naturally, having received so much money, they should be grateful for it,” he said, continuing, “This isn’t a criminal offense in a purely moral sense. It’s already clear that all this is happening before elections, meaning this phenomenon happens all the time; it’s nothing new; the problem is the scale.”