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On July 4, a seminar under the theme The International Experience of Parliamentary Budgetary Offices took place on the initiative of the RA NA Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs and the Budget Office, where the Head of the programme Public Financial Management in the South Caucasus Jens Petersen-Thumser also took part.

Highlighting the cooperation with the GIZ the Chair of the RA NA Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs Gagik Minasyan noted that in recent years the organization implemented programmes with the parliament and expressed hope that the cooperation would be continuous.

Jens Petersen-Thumser also evaluated the cooperation with the RA NA and assured that the support to the implementation of the designed programmes would be continuous. He has informed that they successfully cooperate with the RA Ministry of Finance, the RA Audit Chamber and the State Revenue Committee adjunct to the RA Government. Jens Petersen-Thumser is hopeful that the organized seminar will promote the improvement of the structure.

In his report the Head of the RA NA Budget Office Gagik Barseghyan has noted that the main goal of the creation of the structure is to promote the effective implementation of the oversight authorities reserved in the public financial sphere to the National Assembly by the RA Constitution and other legal acts by providing professional support and information to the deputies, Standing Committees and Factions. As he noted, the structure functions independently.

According to the speaker, since January 2016 the Budget Office has prepared and provided to the beneficiaries certificates with comparative analyses, which related to the draft laws and reports, revenues and expenditures of the state budgets, the RA main social-economic indices and the state debt.

The expert Ashot Avetisyan touched upon the fiscal discipline of the functions, the strategic distribution of the resources, the economic forecast, and the analysis of the revenues and expenditures of the Budget Offices.

The expert Ashot Yeghiazaryan presented a report which related to the functions of the structure, particularly the provision of the public services and the assessment problems of efficiency.