Media: Thousands of Armenian citizens face impoverishment

An article published by Armenian news agency 168 Zham argues that thousands of Armenian citizens face impoverishment in 2024.

"Although the Armenian government has approved a rather generous budget for 2024, artificially increasing budget expenditures by several hundred billion drams, changing the places of money, taking it out of one place and putting it in another, nothing much will change in a citizen's life," Caliber.Az quotes the article as saying.

"The social situation in the country is expected to be as difficult as before. Moreover, hundreds and thousands of citizens are threatened with impoverishment. Their incomes will not increase, while their expenditures will increase significantly as a result of the government's ‘reforms’, increased tax burdens and fines, and higher fees for services in various spheres.

These people will have to live worse than they lived before. And not only because of the tax burden, but also because of expected inflation. The number of such people will be very large, reaching hundreds and thousands.

First of all, we are talking about socially vulnerable groups: pensioners and beneficiaries, whose number in Armenia exceeds 600,000. Their social situation will deteriorate even more. Moreover, they will become poorer, because the government has not found funds in the budget to increase their pensions and benefits. This year pensioners and privileged people will receive the same amount of pensions and allowances as they received last year. Pensions and benefits will not increase, but costs will.

The inflation effect alone is enough to say that these people will start living worse than the year before. It is true that the inflation rate in Armenia has decreased, but it continues to persist. The Central Bank called to ensure price stability, predicts that inflation will gradually increase and fluctuate around the set target. It should be noted that even 2.5 per cent inflation is enough to guarantee the deterioration of the social situation of these people.

But it is not only pensioners and privileged people who are at risk. Deterioration of the social situation is also expected for the so-called ‘working poor’. These are people who work and receive minimum wages, and sometimes even less. The increase in wages, about which the authorities like to make fiery speeches, does not apply to these people.

The government has decided that the minimum wage in Armenia will not be increased this year, which means that hundreds and thousands of minimum wage earners will continue to receive the same amount as last year. Their income in the form of wages will not increase, and their forced expenses will increase, both as a result of increased tax burden and inflation.

The poor will also be all those whose wages will not be raised this year. There will be many of them, both in the public and private sectors. Suffice it to say that there will be no massive wage increases in the public system this year. There will be localized increases, but it will affect a few, sometimes only a select few.

The number of unemployed in Armenia reaches 180,000. These people will not only not receive income in the form of salaries and other payments, but will also bear the impact of inflation and other financial burdens. After all this, it is not surprising that there are more than 800,000 poor people in Armenia, and several tens of thousands are extremely poor. It is clear that poverty among these people will deepen and the social situation will deteriorate. Hundreds and thousands of citizens will continue to live in poverty, even worse than last year. This is what awaits many this year as a result of the 'fair' social policy pursued by the authorities," the article says.