WORLD BANK REPORTS POVERTY RISE IN ARMENIA
AZG DAILY
2009-11-20 00:28:31 (GMT +04:00)
Poverty in Armenia has increased this year for the first time in over
a decade as a result of the ongoing economic recession, the World
Bank said on Tuesday, according to azatutyun.am.
In a detailed analysis partly based on government statistics, it
estimated that the proportion of Armenians living below the official
poverty line reached 28.4 percent in the second quarter of this year.
The official poverty rate stood at 25.6 percent during the same period
of last year, meaning that the number of poor people has since risen
by at least 90,000 since then.
According to the website, the bank said the level of extreme poverty
has nearly doubled to 6.9 percent, or by over 107,000 in absolute
terms, on the year-on-year basis. "These developments are a setback for
Armenia after a decade of nearly double-digit growth … and reduction
in poverty incidence from 56.1 percent in 1998/99 to 23.5 percent in
[late] 2008," it said.
Armenia’s economy contracted by 18.3 percent in January-September
2009, one of the steepest GDP declines in the world. According to the
World Bank, poverty was mainly pushed up by the resulting job losses
as well as a fall in seasonal migration of labor from the country.
"The data show a significant number of jobs lost, particularly in
construction and manufacturing, and a more discouraged work force,"
read its analysis. "However, there was no appreciable reduction in
wage rates and working hours among those continue to be employed."
"There were large flows of returning migrants from Russia and other
destinations for temporary migration. And migrants who would normally
head to Russia during the spring have likely stayed at home," added the
document mainly authored by Lire Ersado, a senior World Bank economist.
Ersado said the poverty rise would have been more drastic without
anti-crisis measures taken by the Armenian government. "The coping
measures taken by the government and households themselves may have
dampened the consequences of the financial crisis," he told a news
conference in Yerevan. "Without that, the poverty increase could have
been 7.6 percentage points."
The government has borrowed more than $1.3bn in emergency loans from
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other foreign
sources this year to try to finance those measures. That has allowed
it, among other things, to mostly offset a serious shortfall in tax
revenues resulting from the crisis.
"There is a strong case to be made to increase funding, not cut,
for targeted social safety net programs and for other pro-poor
spending programs," said the analysis. It also encouraged the
government to carry on with "employment intensive investments" in
public infrastructures.