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The 530,000 pensioners of the country will receive increases of about 4,000 drams ($11), raising the average to 15,000-17,000 drams ($44-50).

This pre-election gesture became even more attractive, when the Prime Minister stated the government plans to bring the pensions in line with benchmark minimum income at about 21,800 drams ($64).

Surely welcomed by the half-million recipients of aid, the increase nonetheless carries political overtones five months away from an election in which Sargsyan is expected to sweep his way into the presidency.

As recently as this spring, the Prime Minister himself during the parliamentary campaign criticized parties that promised to increase pensions to 30,000 drams ($89) within the next five years.

In May, when the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun talked of raising pensions, Sargsyan, in a public TV televised government meeting said:

“The pensions they promise… will they get them from heaven?! The unrealistic promises are only for gaining political dividends.” The PM went on to ask the chairman of the State Foundation for Social Security Vazgen Khachikyan to explain publicly why a drastic increase of pensions is not possible.

Four months later the impossible has been realized by the presumed next president.

To increase the pensions the budget will additionally need 50-52 billion drams ($150-155 million) that will be got from “inner resources”, the Minister of Finance and Economics Vardan Khachatryan says.

“No pressure is planned to be imposed on employees and tax payers. The money is available and there is a program to increase pensions to 21,000 drams ($63),” Khachatryan says.

The ARF, qualified as giving unrealistic promises and much criticized by the PM in pre-election period, avoided answering ArmeniaNow’s inquiry. Armen Rustamyan said only they are glad their program is being realized.

The government’s new decision inspires hopes to pensioners, but the alarming tendency for daily increase in prices depreciates those hopes.

Despite Article 48 of the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia includes an obligatory phrase: “merited life to elderly people”, pensions remain three times less than the standard considered for the average “consumer basket”.

Hovhannes Khojoyan, 71, walks about 8 kilometers in the sun every day from the 2nd district of Nor Nork to reach charity diners of the Mission Armenia organization in the 7th district to have a hot meal a day and go back to take dinner also to his 95-year-old mother.

An engineer with 41 year experience, he makes his and his mother’s living with just 14,000 drams ($41). And though it somehow suffices in summer, it is just enough to pay for the heating of their room in winter.

“I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if our authorities tried to live a month with the pensions they give,” says Khojoyan and answers his question: “They would not stand it, but force us to. Everything has become very expensive. Summer is almost over, but we haven’t even tried fruits yet.”

Pensions have increased almost twice in the last 7 years, but similarly the prices for everything from food products to communal expenses have increased as well.

The data of the State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition say bread products have increased in price by 7.8 percent, flour by for 8.2 percent, vegetable oil by 10-12 percent and butter by 20-25 percent since the beginning of summer.

Ashot Shahnazaryan, chairman of the commission says such an increase in prices should be seriously studied, because in reality imported goods should have dropped in prices.

“We study to see if the increase in the prices for imported goods is a result of price increase in the world or there are other reasons,” says Shahnazaryan.

The greater part of the 80,000 single elderly in Armenia has no income but pension and lives in extreme poverty surviving mainly owing to charity diners.

“Providing high pensions is quite difficult in a country with widely spread unemployment. Today there is just 0.9 workers per each pensioner, when there should be at least two to provide the pension per one person,” says Anahit Gevorgyan, head of the elderly people’s department at the Ministry of Labor and Social Issues.