Today, the regular Cabinet meeting was held, chaired by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan.

The government has decided to increase the amount of refunds from non-cash pension transactions. For this purpose, it is proposed to increase the 12% refund for non-cash payments to 20%, increasing the maximum amount of refunds from 6,000 drams to 10,000 drams, and extend the implementation period of the measure until December 31, 2026 inclusive. As a result of the change in the amount of refunds, the pensions of pensioners receiving pensions in a non-cash manner and making non-cash purchases will increase by 3,000-4,000 drams in 2026. For this purpose, it will be necessary to to allocate an additional 14 billion drams, while in case of increasing the total pension amounts by the same amount, twice as many funds would have to be allocated. At the same time, increasing the amount of refunds will contribute to an increase in the volume of non-cash transactions. According to the observation of the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Arsen Torosyan, this means an increase in pensions or benefits.

By the government's decision, 1 billion 708 million drams were allocated to the staffs of regional administrations through co-financing of subvention programs aimed at the development of the infrastructure of the Armenian communities. The decision proposes to co-finance 15 subvention programs of 12 communities.

By another government decision, a redistribution of about 3.27 billion drams was made for the overhaul, reconstruction and construction of roads.

At today's government session, Nikol Pashinyan touched upon the indicators of economic activity of the Republic of Armenia. The Prime Minister noted that according to the data for October, a new historical record of paid jobs has been recorded in the Republic of Armenia. By October 2025, we already have 810 thousand 74 jobs, which is more than 5,000 more than in the previous month. The Prime Minister also compared the presented figures with the indicators of October 2018. Accordingly, compared to October 2018, jobs increased by 223,895, the total gross wage fund increased by 149 billion drams, and the average salary, which amounted to 313 thousand drams in October, increased by 135,000 drams.

The Government has approved a pilot procedure for assessing performance in individual bodies of the state administration system. The goal of the award system based on new criteria is to contribute to increasing the efficiency of the state administration system through performance assessments of priority tasks for the reporting period in the direction of implementing the goals and objectives set by the Government's program and strategies.

Referring to the decision, Nikol Pashinyan noted that there is a need to increase the attractiveness and efficiency of work in the state system. At the same time, according to the Prime Minister, today the state system is working with a significantly greater workload than it was, for example, in 2018 or 2019, as the volume of work has increased.

At today's government session, Nikol Pashinyan announced the need to create two new working groups to address the problems of air pollution and traffic jams in Yerevan. "I instruct the staff to make a proposal on the composition of the working groups. One of the groups should deal with air pollution issues. First, we need to put this issue on our agenda, understand it, and provide concrete solutions," the Prime Minister said, adding that the second group will take on coordinated work to regulate traffic and overcome traffic jams.