YEREVAN (Armepress)–A website dedicated to encouraging repatriation to Armenia will be launched in the near future, announced Gagik Yeganian, chief of a refugees and migran’s department of the Territorial Governance Ministry of Armenia Wednesday.
www.tundarcararmenia.am will allow interested individuals to apply to the necessary government structures to facilitate repatriation issues, Yeganian told a news conference. He added that number of people coming to Armenia in 2006 was 21,500 more than the number that left the country.
He added that after a decade of exodus of Armenia’s from 1993 to 2003 the reverse trend begun in 2004 still continues.
Yaganian said Armenia has welcomed more than 67,000 refugees since 2000, adding that since 2004 some 2.9 billion drams ($8.7 million) has been spent from the state budget for housing of refugees.
He said the flow of people leaving and coming to Armenia grows 15 percent to 18 percent annually. He said in 2002 some 1.2 million people came to and left Armenia, while this figure is expected to double by the end of this year.
The majority of people–36 percent–come and leave Armenia by ground transport. This is accounted for by the fact that now thousands of Armenia’s travel to neighboring Georgia for summer holidays on its Black Sea beaches.
