Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper envisages no extreme poverty in Armenia

Under the revised Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) of the Armenian government, the level of poverty in Armenia is supposed to drop to 12 percent by 2012.The next target will be 9 percent, which the government expects to achieve by 2015. In 20021 only 6 percent of Armenians would be rated a spoor.For comparison in 2006 the level of poverty was 26.5 percent.The revised strategy was presented today by Melik Gasparian, head of a team of experts hired to develop the strategy. He said today by 2012 the share of extreme poverty is expected to fall to below 2 percent from the current 4.1 percent and by 2021 this problem would be resolved. By 2015 the share of government subsidies to health will make 3.1 percent of the national GDP. Education subsidies will grow to 4 percent of the GDP.