Crisis increased poverty
Mariam Matevosyan is a single mother and has a daughter. For the past five years, she has been selling candles to maintain herself, her daughter's family and pay the rent.
"There are many mothers like me, but there are those who are in worse situations. Everyone around me is begging for money. If I wasn't living on rent, I would be able to get on my feet a little," says Mariam.
The RA Government had developed the "Sustainable Development Plan" to fight against poverty in 2008. According to Head of the Department of Economic Policies and Strategy Development at the RA Ministry of Economy Artak Baghdasaryan, the plan foresees having 6.8% poverty by 2021 and reducing the level of extreme poverty to 1.2%.
"However, our plans changed to a certain extent due to the global financial-economic crisis. The targets that we had set before the crisis needed to be revised. During that period, we exchanged views and conducted studies to understand the phenomena in theory," said Artak Baghdasaryan.
Many citizens of Yerevan said they were unaware of the "Sustainable Development Plan" and don't have much hope either.
"What should the authorities do? As if that wasn't enough, they are not ashamed to announce that they can compensate for the gas inflation and the rise in prices of other products by increasing pensions by 1,000 drams," says professor Levon Grigoryan.
The last official poverty indicator was released in 2008. According to that, 23.5% of people are in poverty and 3.1% are in extreme poverty.
