Remarks by President Serzh Sargsyan at the meeting with the members of the new government

Dear Colleagues,

I congratulate you all on your appointments as members of the new government. In the year, we have gone through three major electoral processes. After the parliamentary elections, we have the parliament which represents almost the entire spectrum of our country’s political palette and which has already proved to be a strong and active political body.

As a result of the presidential elections, we have obtained a new political culture, while during the elections to the Yerevan City Council held several days ago, our citizens have voiced once again their demands and are ready to support those officials, who are working day and night, bringing something new every day and who prefer practical and concrete work to making shows.

Every election and state elections in particular, present challenges to our country and our young democracy. We have faced these challenges rather doggedly and emerged as a stronger state and a stronger society. Now, we are entering the most favorable times since 2008, when we can entirely dedicate ourselves to the work, to performing with dedication and persistence, to solving people’s problems and creating eventually a more secure Armenia.

Expectations from this government are great, and I don’t see any impediment for not working efficiently. On the contrary, I believe that now favorable conditions have been established. We have stated on many occasions that through our work accomplished in the past, we have created the base for a significant breakthrough. The performance of this government will be judged by the results only, strictly by definite results.

Last year, the government was assigned with the task to provide at least the 7 percent economic growth. This year, the task remains the same. However from now on, we are expecting positive results from your activities, efficient performance by the government and concrete indicators relating to the resolution of the social problems. The question will not be what’s has been done but rather what the results are. And these results must be observable and tangible. Tangible means the increase of the wages, increase of the pensions and not only for the government employees; it is also necessary through the use of different instruments to ensure the increase of the wages in the private sector, optimization of the swollen state structure. Tangible means the resolution of concrete social problems.

Dear Colleagues, our problems are plenty and we will have the opportunity to talk in the nearest future about these problems and avenues to address them; we will talk about it in the extended format.

I wish you all success and ask you to realize clearly that much depends on your success. It may probably seem indiscernible from the first sight but really much depends on it. I am confident that not only the members of the government but all employees of our state structures will be working with great responsibility.

Once again I congratulate you all and wish success.