Starting today, the minimum pension in Armenia will increase from 31,600 drams to 36,000 drams, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote on Facebook.
“In the pre-election program for the early parliamentary elections in 2021, we promised to equate the minimum pension to the cost of a food [consumer] basket by 2026.
Starting today, the minimum pension in Armenia will increase from 31,600 drams to 36,000 drams. 36,000 drams is 99.5 percent of the minimum cost of the food basket currently established in Armenia.
And those retirees who spend their pensions non-cash and benefit from the 10 percent refund program will actually receive more than 106 percent of the food basket.
This is an unprecedented event in the history of our country. For the first time, a pensioner will be able to cover the minimum food cost through retirement expenses. At the same time, only 12 percent of pensioners (about 73,000 people) receive the minimum pension. On the other hand, the pension of about 500,000 retirees is over 36,000, and their pension will also increase from July 1.
I also want to emphasize that at the time of the 2018 Revolution, the minimum pension in Armenia was 16 thousand drams. In other words, the minimum pension has more than doubled over the past five years,” he said.
