Yesterday, a conference was held by the National Assembly’s board of loans and budgets. During the discussion regarding the 2006 budget plan, Minister of Finance and Economy of the Republic of Armenia Pavel Safaryan announced that the government would be providing 100 million drams from the state budget in order to fight against the use of tobacco. This is the equivalent to $220,000 U.S. dollars. We must add that at the present there is no actual plan as to how the authorities are preparing to fight against it and how they have calculated that the amount necessary is 100 million drams.
