Yerevan Municipality in 2025 3.4 times more than planned: 2.8 billion drams, par

“LUYS” Foundation analyzed the 2025 vision of Yerevan city. budget execution report.

Thus.

• The actual size of the total revenues of the budget, 148.5 billion drams, is 27.2% higher than last year’s figure, but is 6.8% less than the figure planned by the approved budget. The increase was provided by “taxes and duties” and “other revenues”.

Several legislative changes, not pleasing to the public, contributed significantly to the collection of Yerevan city budget revenues.

In particular, the increase in taxes and fees is mainly due to the increase of the property tax base by 50% compared to the previous year, the real estate tax payments calculated as a result of considering multi-apartment buildings and other buildings without a certificate of completion as a single completed building in 2025, real estate tax payments for new property units generated during the year, as well as the increase in construction fees due to the increase in the volume of construction works.

The increase in other property taxes is due to the increase in the number of vehicles. And in other revenues, the increase in actual revenues for local fees, which constitute the main part of administrative charges, was mainly provided at the expense of changing the methodology of calculating garbage collection fees for residential buildings.

The fees charged for parking in the parking lot, on the contrary, decreased by 8.4% compared to 2024. Although parking fees have increased from 2 to 13.3 times since January 1, 2024, the actual collections in 2025 are only 62.7% more than the 2023 figure.

Bearing in mind that no tangible off-street parking load shedding was recorded during the mentioned period, it is hard to believe that the main reason for such a relatively “modest” increase in the collection of parking fees is a reduction in the number of parked cars.

• 2025 of the city of Yerevan the budget expenditures, 140.8 billion drams, were underachieved in relation to both the approved and specified plan. Underperformance refers to both current and capital costs. In percentage terms, the shortfall in capital expenditure is more than 4.5 times higher than the shortfall in current expenditure.

  Among the expenses, special attention is paid to the expenses incurred for the purpose of rewards, monetary incentives and special payments, which increased more than tenfold during the last three years and amounted to 2.8 billion drams in 2025. Moreover, their actual size in the reporting year exceeded the figure planned by the approved budget by 3.4 times.

  According to the operational classification, there is an underperformance in relation to the specified plan for all expenditure directions. The recorded significant shortcomings prove once again that budget planning remains one of the weakest aspects of the city authorities.

• Not even half of the budgeted expenditures approved for many of the vitally important projects have been implemented. Among such programs, we can single out “Rehabilitation and maintenance of bridge structures”, “Reconstruction and overhaul of highways and streets”, “Modernization of transport system”, “Yerevan city lighting program”, three programs aimed at increasing Yerevan’s energy efficiency, etc. The picture of some programs with a large public resonance is very worrying. It is noteworthy that.

  The 9.6 billion drams allocated by the 2025 budget for the construction of the “Ajapnyak” station within the framework of the “Yerevan metro infrastructure construction” project was reduced more than 7 times according to the specified plan, but even in this case, the performance was only 56.2%. Moreover, the actual expenses of 0.8 billion drams refer only to the payment for the design and estimate documents, which was still provided for in the 2024 budget.

  Although the 3.0 billion drams provided in the approved plan for the implementation of the project “Construction and overhaul of pre-school educational institutions implemented with state support (delegated powers)” was reduced four times by the revised plan, however, even that reduced plan was underachieved, when one of the most important targets of the current government’s activity plan is the construction and overhaul of 300 schools and 500 kindergartens.

• In 2025, the budget of the city of Yerevan had an actual surplus of 7.7 billion drams, against the deficit of 8.7 billion drams planned in the revised plan. In addition, the budget deficit was increased 100-fold by the revised plan compared to the amount planned by the approved plan, but instead of the deficit, a surplus was recorded that was roughly comparable to it.

Although at the beginning of the report, an attempt was made to give the best possible explanation for the low performance of the budget: “the deviations of the planned and actual spent amounts are mainly due to the savings generated in the procurement process and the transfer of contractual obligations”, but in the text of the same report, it is further stated that “the deviations of the planned and actual indicators are mainly due to the complete or partial non-implementation of the programs implemented within the powers delegated to the Mayor of Yerevan”.

The latter speaks about the insufficient level of management of the city government.

The full analysis is available with the following link.

 “LUYS” Foundation

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