Armenia announces plans to increase pensions ahead of elections
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has announced plans to increase pensions in the country by up to ֏10,000 ($27) by April. The move came months ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for June.
Pashinyan made the announcement on Wednesday, clarifying that ‘relatively low pensions will increase by ֏10,000, higher ones by less’.
Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan said that government was allocating an additional ֏75 billion ($200 million) to implement the increase, affecting over 660,00 people.
According to CivilNet, Labour and Social Affairs Minister Arsen Torosyan has explained that the basic pension in Armenia, ֏24,000 ($64), would increase by ֏10,000. Minimum pensions, which were previously ֏36,000 ($96), would rise to ֏46,000 ($123).
Torosyan has added that the decision also applied to military pensions, which would increase by ֏8,000–֏8,500 ($21–$23), or ‘in some cases’.
Papoyan’s press service later told CivilNet that the government planned to allocate ֏60 billion ($160 million) from the state budget, financed by reserve funds and taxes collected in 2025 for the pension increase.
CivilNet noted that the amount allocated for the increase covers the period between April and the end of 2026, and that the Finance Ministry has not provided additional information on further allocations for a 12-month period.
A pre-election ploy?
Armenia’s Civil Contract party was accused of handing out ‘pre-election bribes’ by increasing pensions months before the June parliamentary elections.
Narek Karapetyan, the nephew of detained Russian–Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan — who has been named a prime ministerial candidate of his newly formed Strong Armenia party, suggested on social media that the decision was born out of concern from his uncle’s growing popularity.
‘If Samvel Karapetyan forced the government to raise pensions before the elections, can you imagine what he would do if he became prime minister?’, wrote Narek Karapetyan.
According to CivilNet, Economy Minister Papoyan rejected the opposition’s framing of the decision as a ‘pre-election bribe’, claiming instead that the initiative was ‘made possible due to high economic growth’. The media outlet noted that Armenia recorded a 7.2% economic growth in 2025, exceeding the budget’s 5.6% growth forecast, but added that this growth ‘did not lead to a proportional increase in tax revenues’.
In their coverage of the decision, RFE/RL cited Pashinyan as rejecting plans to increase pensions in December 2025, a little over two months before Wednesday’s decision.
At the time, Pashinyan justified his opposition to the increase by citing government research suggesting that pensioners spent most of their salaries on healthcare, and that the government had already introduced public health insurance.
‘If you increase the pension by ֏10,400 ($28) per month, what will the pensioner do? What will they do with that money? What will they spend it on?’, he was quoted as saying at the time.
Yousef Bardouka
