Monday, March 25 2019 16:11

ArmInfo.The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs proposes to establish a minimum pension threshold of 25,500 drams.Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Affairs of Armenia Smbat Saiyan stated this on March 25 at the meeting of the standing  parliamentary committee on health and social affairs, introducing the  bill on amending the RA Law "On State Pensions". 

The Deputy Minister said that these reforms are aimed at reducing the  extreme poverty in the country. In addition, according to him, the  minimum pension should correspond to the minimum food basket.  He  also noted that earlier, people with various groups of disabilities  received the same pension. "The differences were that they received  various medications, but their pension was the same. However, we  suggest setting 40% of the pension supplement in the amount of 6.400  drams for the disabled of the first group, and 20% in the amount of  3200 drams for the disabled of the second group ", the deputy  minister said.

"For the implementation of these reforms, we allocated about 110  million drams from the state budget. We also take into account the  rise in prices. If the prices increase annually, we will raise the  minimum pension threshold in Armenia," said Saiyan.

As Saiyan noted, the concept of "minimum pension" did not exist  before. "The concept of a minimum pension is a new institution that  did not exist before. If we talk about numbers, the lowest pension  used to be about 16.000 drams per month. As you can see, the minimum  threshold has risen significantly. We hope that in this way we will  implement the first step to eradicate extreme poverty in the country  ", - concluded the Deputy Minister.