IF MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE FUND-IMPLEMENTED PROGRAM IS FROZEN, ARMENIA WILL SEEK OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

Noyan Tapan
March 20, 2008

YEREVAN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN. The Armenian president Robert
Kocharian received a letter from Millennium Challenge Fund’s (MCF)
head George Danilovich about the possible freezing of the program
implemented by MCF in Armenia. In his response letter, the Armenian
president expressed regret and asked G. Danilovich to inform him
beforehand about the final decision so that it will be possible to plan
future work. Robert Kocharian announced this at the March 20 press
conference. According to him, unlike all other programs, MCF program
has one peculiarity: the fund may stop the program’s implementation
at any moment. "It means that the program may have other contexts,
besides the economic one, and we should always be prepared that the
program may be frozen but I do not doubt that the Republic of Armenia
is able to implement the program completely," the president stated.

He underlined that Armenia is the master of the program, it is a big
program aimed at developing the rural areas, and only part of the
program is being implemented with resources of this fund, another part
is being implemented under a new 66 mln dollar agreement signed with
the Asian Bank, yet another part – with state budgetary resources,
and some part of the program is being done with funds of Hayastan
All-Armenian Fund. "We would like to continue our activities with
Millennium Challenge Fund. If they take such a decision, we will seek
other opportunities to implement this program completely," he said,
adding that he has no doubts that some other opportunities for this
5-year program will be found.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation had envisaged to allocate a
total of 235 million USD for development of Armenian rural areas. The
program was launched in 2006.