News - Economy minister: In our opinion, poverty will be considerably reduced in Armenia

In 2022, the World Bank and some other major international organizations had warned that poverty in Armenia could increase from 26.5 percent to 39.6 percent because inflation is high, Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan stated during the Armenian government's briefings Thursday. "[But] with the faster increase of the minimum wage, the faster increase of pensions, and the introduction of other tools, we managed to achieve that poverty not only did not increase, but even decreased—the 26.5 became 24.8 percent," Kerobyan added. "In 2023, when we [i.e. Armenia] have a 13 percent increase in real wages, according to our calculations, we have 37,000 newly created jobs, we have high economic growth and low inflation, we can talk about [the fact] that, in our opinion, poverty will be considerably reduced [in Armenia] in 2023," noted the economy minister.