ARMENIA EYES INCREASE IN MILITARY AND SOCIAL SPENDING
By Ruzanna Khachatrian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Nov 6 2006
Armenia is set to increase its military spending by almost 39 percent
next year, officials said after closed discussions of the 2007 draft
budget in parliament on Monday.
Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian said the allocation of some $285
million to the defense sphere could not be compared to neighboring
Azerbaijan’s $1 billion military spending, but "is enough if managed
well and expended purposefully."
In an RFE/RL interview First Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance
Pavel Safarian called next year’s budget socially oriented despite
the drastic increase in military spending. "It is not the year-to-year
spending increase in a separate sphere that characterizes the nature
of the budget, but the share this sphere has in the overall budget,"
the deputy minister said.
A total of 198 billion drams (around $555 million) in the $1.48 billion
budget are envisaged for all social spheres, including education,
public health and pensions, against 102 billion drams (around $285
million) to be spent for the Armenian military and law-enforcement
agencies.
According to Safarian, a total of some 20 percent increase is planned
in social spending, with the largest share of this increase to fall
on healthcare.
Last week Freedom House urged the U.S. administration to withhold
promised economic assistance to Armenia which it believes has failed
to meet "reasonable standards" for democracy and civil liberties.
The New York-based leading human rights organization charged that
the Armenian government has been "backsliding on promised reforms".
The Corporation is set to approve the list of nations eligible for
that aid on Wednesday.
Armenia’s Minister of Economy and Finance Vartan Khachatrian, who on
behalf of the Armenian government signed a $235.6 million MCA compact
with the scheme managing Millennium Challenge Corporation last March,
downplays the impact of the Freedom House findings and hopes the
Corporation will not suspend the program.
"I think we don’t have problems. Freedom House studies only two
indexes in one of the three blocks of questions. The decision to be
made will not be based on Freedom House evaluations only, opinions
of other NGOs will be compared and a final decision will be made,"
the minister told RFE/RL.
The promised U.S. aid would be used for upgrading Armenia’s battered
irrigation networks and rural roads. Officials say the vast majority
of approximately one million Armenians dependent on farming would
directly benefit from that.
Khachatrian says at least $12 million of the expected allocations
have been considered in the 2007 budget expenditure pattern.