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On September 18, the press conference of NA Speaker Alen Simonyan and Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, who was on an official visit to Yerevan, took place. During the press conference, the speaker of the House of Representatives informed that the possibility of Armenia joining the Millennium Challenges program was also discussed at the meeting with the Armenian counterpart.
In reality, however, Armenia cannot join the Millennium Challenges program for a simple reason.
The “prerequisite” to join the program
In 2004, the US Congress established the Millennium Challenge Corporation to provide financial assistance to lower middle income countries that are relatively democratic. And the countries where the per capita GDP is lower than the amount provided by the program are considered to have a lower than average income. This number changes every year. For example, in 2006 it was 1,575 dollars, this year it is already 3,955 dollars.
In 2006, a support agreement was signed between the corporation and the government of Armenia, which was frozen as a result of the events of March 1, 2008 and the situation related to it.
According to the five-year plan, it was envisaged to implement various projects in Armenia with a total cost of about $236 million, mainly in the fields of development of rural communities, creation and repair of infrastructures.
With certain reductions, Armenia received $177 million from these programs and completed it in 2011.
As we mentioned, as a result of political events, Armenia was deprived of the opportunity to apply for the program again, but 2 years later, in 2013, Armenia again began to meet the criteria necessary to apply for the program, in particular, meeting the requirements related to democracy, corruption indices, transparency, etc.
However, Armenia no longer became a beneficiary of the Millennium Challenges program.
In May 2018, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was the head of the board of the Millennium Challenges Corporation, stated that the US was ready to study Armenia’s application to be included in the grant program, if positive changes were recorded in terms of standards.
A few months after this announcement, Armenia was ranked among middle-income countries and was deprived of the opportunity to participate in the program.
To this day, Armenia is considered a middle-income country.
Thus we can state that in the last few years, Armenia has been considered a middle-income country, and the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, talking about Armenia’s participation in the Millennium Challenges program is not pertinent as the growth of Armenia’s economy allows us to predict that in the foreseeable future, Armenia cannot return to the ranks of lower middle income countries.
Sevada Ghazaryan
Hakob Karapetyan
