Thursday, 31 July 2014
Armenia maintains its position in the UN Human Development Program
A Cabinet sitting was held today, chaired by Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan.
Opening the meeting, the Prime Minister addressed the audience: “Before proceeding to the agenda, I want to present you the following information. On July 24 the UNDP published a report on the human development index in 2014. I would like to note that although the index has a marginal improvement in Armenia, however, we remained on last year’s 87th place. In this regard, a significant improvement is perhaps to be expected from the educational system. In particular, the report notes that if the expected duration of education is 12.3 years, the actual average duration is 10.8 years.
In the Government’s program, we recorded compulsory 12-year education by the State, and this year already, these changes should be implemented. I hereby assign the Ministry of Education and Science to closely monitor these developments and work with the UN to include revised statistics in the report for 2015.
There is another important aspect of this index, which should perhaps be considered in more detail by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. If the human development index is précised by the coefficient of inequality, Armenia’s position proves bettered by fifteen points, and we come ahead of neighboring Georgia, Turkey and Iran.”
The Government approved today the program of activities of the Government in 2014, the Government’s priorities for 2014, as well as the substantiation of measures and priority tasks. The meeting next revoked this January 9 decision on the approval of the Government’s program of activities and priorities.
The Government approved as follows:
- The second program of action in the framework of the Open Government Partnership (the first was completed in late 2013), which was compiled on the basis of proposals submitted by both the Government and civil society, and includes areas such as mining, health, education , local government, freedom of information, etc. its purpose is to increase the transparency of public administration and the level of reporting by stimulating efficiency management system;
- The addendum to the Strategy of export-oriented industrial policy, which in a number of specific promising areas will include the production of dairy and meat products and thereby improve the quality and safety of products, increase the volume of exports.
The Government made a State budget reallocation for 2014, amending one of its previous decisions to offset the costs of the minimum wage provided to the employees of the National Academy of Sciences and its system SNCOs as of this July 1.
Another reallocation was made to provide 140 million drams to the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater after A. Spendiaryan to ensure comparability in the salaries of members of 4-creative groups (orchestra, ballet band, choir and opera soloists) and other groups.
