YEREVAN, October 12. /ARKA/. The National Assembly of Armenia, at an extraordinary session on Monday, ratified loan and grant agreements totaling $284.4 million with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, part of the World Bank Group).
66 MPs voted in favor, 0 against, and 21 abstained.
The funds will be allocated to a program focused on providing housing and developing Armenia’s mortgage market. The financial and grant agreements between Armenia and the IBRD were signed on April 29 and 30, 2026.
The program, with a total value of $284.4 million, aims to improve access to housing solutions for approximately 109,000 forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh, deepen and expand the mortgage market, and enhance long-term development processes and housing policy implementation.
The program comprises three components: housing subsidies and institutional development support; housing finance market development; and program management, communication, monitoring, and evaluation. The planned financing—to be disbursed in stages upon the achievement of established targets and results—comprises $240 million in IBRD loan funds, a $24.4 million grant from the Global Concessional Financing Facility (GCFF), a $10 million grant from the Livable Planet Fund (LPF)—financed by IBRD surplus income—and a $10 million IBRD loan to the National Mortgage Company for the implementation of the program’s second component.
Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Lusine Kocharyan stated that the total estimated cost of the state support program for housing provision to displaced families is approximately $880 million.
According to her, under the program, about 45,000 displaced persons will receive financial support, and 6,500 displaced families will be eligible to receive housing certificates.
Kocharyan noted that the $240 million IBRD loan has a 29-year maturity, including a 10-year grace period; it carries a floating interest rate and is repayable by December 31, 2030.
Earlier, Armenia’s Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Arsen Torosyan, stated that as of October 5, 2026, 8,563 families displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh had received housing purchase certificates under the state housing program. Of these, 4,911 certificates have been utilized.
It was previously reported that Armenian authorities plan to increase the value of the housing certificate from 3 million to 4 million drams for families displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh who reside in communities adjacent to Yerevan. In June 2026, Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Tigran Khachatryan reported that 45.7 billion drams had actually been allocated from the state budget in 2025 to support compatriots displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, bringing the total allocated since 2023 to approximately 146 billion drams.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had also previously stated that the government plans to allocate around 800 billion drams to implement a housing provision program for those displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh.
On Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing in Artsakh
On September 19–20, 2023, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale aggression against Artsakh, employing artillery, UAVs, and combat aircraft. On September 28, following negotiations with the Azerbaijani side, Artsakh President Samvel Shahramanyan issued a decree dissolving all state institutions of the republic and declaring that the Republic of Artsakh would cease to exist as of January 1, 2024.
The residents of Artsakh were forced to relocate to Armenia. According to the government of the Republic of Armenia, more than 115,000 people from Artsakh have been registered, and assistance programs have been implemented.
