YEREVAN, November 5, /ARKA/. First deputy finance minister Pavel Safarian said during a Tuesday parliamentary hearing on 2010 draft budget that the government plans to allocate 95.4 billion Drams to education sector, down from 108 billion Drams projected for 2009.
According to the deputy minister, the education spending in 2010 will make 3% of the overall projected GDP, as much as in 2009.
Some 90 billion Drams are earmarked for the current expenditures, 472 million drams will be paid as salaries to the ministry personnel and the staff of provincial education departments. Some 3.9 billion Drams are earmarked for capital expenditures. Also 1.6 billion Drams are expected to be spent on reforms and 439 million Drams on school reconstruction projects.
The average monthly salary of a school teacher in 2010 is expected to be 116,500 rubles. Some 65.4 billion Drams are earmarked for general education, by 1.5% less than projected for 2009. The deputy minister said the reduction is due to the fact that the number of students of secondary schools is expected to slash by about 20,000 next year to 380,000.
Also 9 billion Drams are supposed to be spent on providing children from vulnerable families with free text-books; 698 million Drams will be spent on equipping schools with computer classes. As a result, Pavel Safarian said, 900 schools across Armenia will have access to Internet. The higher education will get 7.5 billion Drams- by 0.6% less than in 2009.
According to the 2010 draft budget, the government plans to collect 676. 6 billion Drams of revenues, down from 772 billion projected for 2009. It also plans to spend 859.6 billion drams, of which 85.7% will be current expenditures. Tax revenues for 2010 are projected at 533 billion Drams, up from 510 billion, projected for 2009.–0–
