According to the calculations of Hrant Bagratyan, a member of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) parliamentary group, the poverty rate in Armenia in 2011 was over 40 percent.
“It rose from 23 percent to 35.8 percent in 3 years, in the fourth year, it ostensibly improved by 0.8 percent. There is no progress; there has been deterioration in the past 3-4 years,” Mr. Bagratyan said to www.aravot.am. Talking about the index made public by the World Bank that the poverty rate had fallen from 54 percent to 35 percent in years 2004-2011, Mr. Bagratyan said: “If the World Bank had really been fair, it would have said that the situation is bad. The World Bank is wrong from A to Z, because the poverty rate should be divided by the number of inhabitants, whereas the World Bank divides by the official number of inhabitants and doesn’t take into account that 100 000 people leave the country every year. If we count this way, 35.8 percent has become 38.8 percent – 3 percent of the population left the country last year. Even if we consider the index of the World Bank, the situation is catastrophic. They said 4-5 years ago that the poverty rate would fell from 25 percent to 11 percent, but it has become 35 percent and, actually, 38 percent.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
