Welfare recipient creditors will get $200 USD against to 1.000 soviet rubles. They will get 200 USD + 70 % against 1.000-3.000 rubles, 200 USD + 40 % – against 3.000-5.000 rubles, 200 USD + 20 % – against 5.000-10.000 rubles and 200 USD + 10 % against more than 10.000 rubles.
This distribution was made without any research, and still no one, including the prime-minister, can say how many of those 2.207.000 depositors are welfare recipients. Instead of this they announced, that they would provide 1 billion AMD to make reimbursement to all welfare recipient depositors and this sum would also include the technical support for this work. “We don’t know the number of these people yet, because the two commissions, which had been founded for conducting these works, hadn’t found out about this. That is why we are going to suggest that the government leave this behind for the time being so we can work out a new basis for this project on the base of the existing two ones. And after this we will make a decision about the capacity and proportion of the reimbursement”,- said A. Margaryan in the National Assembly yesterday. Only after working out this kind of base it will be clear how many creditors will be reimbursed from this 1 billion dram. “The government will work out a procedure for this process, it will appoint a body responsible for it and this 1 billion dram will be distributed according to our standards. Meanwhile the government will provide money from the expenditure program of 2007-2009 taking into account the fact, that we already have a unique basis for it. We don’t think that we can do this in a couple of years, but the government takes on the responsibility of making reimbursement to people included in the welfare recipients’ lists in order to make as much reimbursement as it can in the period of its governance”,- said Andranik Margaryan.
According to the decision of the government, the first reimbursement will be given to pensioners who are 70 years or older, then accordingly, to lonely pensioners under 70, families of soldiers who fought and died in World War II, first, second and third-class disabled people, families of people perished in the war and disabled veterans. Answering to our question concerning whether this wasn’t considered to be a bribe prior to the referendum, A. Margaryan said: “Why do you think this is bribe? Do you think the opposition was thinking about a bribe when collecting signatures last year? Our project is clear, we said we were going to reimburse this group of people. And after this, the future authorities will decide which group of people to reimburse later. Don’t forget that this problem hasn’t found an overall solution in any country. However, I can say that the deposits reimbursement process hasn’t been led till the end anywhere. The most important thing here is to create a basis for this program. Don’t forget that this program may become a subject of abuse of power; that is why there must be strong control here in order not to have changes in the lists. We must do our best not to let squander even small amounts of money, not to let them try get reimbursement with the help of bribe”.
By the way, hinting about the “Rule of law” political party, who thinks that the government agreed to make this reimbursement only to show that it is doing something, A.Margaryan noted that they had planned to start this kind of program before implanting the “Poverty reduction strategic program”. In connection with this A.Margaryan said: “When we were planning out the program, we intended on implementing it. The only thing is that we didn’t write it down on paper. But now we have it all ready to be carried out,”- said A.Margaryan.