ArmInfo. In 2017, Armenia expects 17 million EUR grant funds from EU on budget support programs. With that, that number is indicative, and by the discussions and certain projects implementation, that number is to be clarified. On April 7, answering to the ArmInfo question, said the Minister of Economic Development and Investments of Armenia Garegin Melqonyan in the fields of working discussion on EU budget support programs.
According to Melqonyan, thanks to budget support penitentiary system of Armenia experienced fundamental changes - repair works of many CEIs were implemented. Repair and modernization works referred the educational and science system and also the agricultural sector. The EU budget support assisted also the modification of strategically important legal documents on state purchases, state management of funds. This list, according to Melqonyan, may be continued to infinity. According to the Deputy Minister, 2016th year was a record year in the context of support of EU to Armenia - 27.5 million EUR. Remarkable is the fact that all the funds were grunt funds and are allocated on irrecoverable basis. By the end of 2016, a new framework agreement with EU was signed on support programs implementation in 2017 and in next years, 51 million EUR, 50 of which is to be allocated for budget support. In 2017, the expected funds in general will be allocated for reforms in agriculture - 7 million EUR, justice sectors and for a number of other program implementations.
At the same time, the agenda on cooperation with EU is rather rich and the framework of financial support to Armenia is not limited with budget support programs. On the given stage, various programs, aimed at various sectors and reforms, are implemented with the help of EU experts like TWINNING, TAIEX, SIGMA.