Minimum wages will be 50,000 drams in Armenia as from January 2014, the country’s minister of labor and social affairs Artem Asatryan said at a government meeting Thursday.

Under the new amendments to the law about minimum monthly salary, the amount of minimum wages is increased by 30% to 45,000 drams as from July 1, 2013, which means an extra 6 billion drams was appropriated from the budget. A new salary calculation scheme will be introduced in Armenia as from January 1, 2014, with an additional of 50 billion drams to be allocated from the budget.

At its Thursday’s meeting Armenian government declined the bill submitted by the Prosperous Armenia party faction, suggesting setting the minimum wages at 75,000 drams in the country as from the beginning of the next year.

The minister said minimum wages will keep increasing every year under the government plan for 2013-2017.

In particular, the program envisages increasing the minimum wages to 55,000 drams as from 2015, to 62,500drams as from 2016 and to 70,000drams as from 2017.

Wednesday Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan said at his meeting with the officials of the ministry of education and science that minimum wages will reach the threshold of 90,000 drams in 2017.

According to ArmStat, monthly average nominal wages was 144,850drams in January-July, an increase of 3.2% from the respective level of 2012. ($1=405.95drams).