YEREVAN, MARCH 11, NOYAN TAPAN. In January 2008, 51.2% of the Armenian state budgetary expenditures was allocated for payment of pensions and social benefits, which amounted to 16.5 bln drams (about 53.8 mln USD) or 32% of the quarterly program. Particularly, 13.1 bln drams was allocated for pensions, 3.4 bln drams for benefits. Financing of pensions grew by 85.9%, that of benefits - by 37.1% as compared with January 2007. According to the press service of the RA ministry of finance and economy, expenditures on operations with nonfinancial assets made 886.6 mln drams. 1.7 bln drams were expenditures on nonfinancial assets, while 2.6 bln drams were revenues from the alienation of nonfinancial assets. Expenditures on nonfinancial assets declined by 24.5%, revenues from the alienation of nonfinancial assets declined by 34.7% as compared with Janaury 2007. In January 2008, the RA state budget (without the inflow of resources under the credit programs financed from foreign sources) was executed with a surplus of 15.2 bln drams. This surplus was financed in the amount of 12.9 bln drams from domestic sources and 2.3 bln drams from foreign sources. The surplus of the state budget declined by 34% on January 2007, with the surplus from domestic sources declining by 39.7%, while the surplus from foreign sources increasing by 44.7%. Net revenues from borrowing sources (securities) made up 4.2 bln drams of the domestic sources of financing the surplus. Available budgetary resources increased by 8.7 bln drams. The credits from the RA state budget amounted to 1.8 bln drams in January 2008. These credits were provided to the NKR. Their amount exceeded by 25.4% the respective index of last year. 474.8 mln drams was allocated for redemption of external liabilities in January 2008. This sum was spent on paying the debt on the programs implemented with the assistance of the World Bank.

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