Yerevan /Mediamax/. Chairman of Armenian State Committee of Science Samvel Harutyunyan branded 2016 as a tough and responsible year for science in terms of substance.

While summarizing efforts made in 2016, Samvel Harutyunyan told the press that the scientific field received AMD 14.2 billion funding from the state budget, AMD 12.6 billion out of which was allocated to base funding, and around 1.4 billion was spent on subject programs.

Samvel Harutyunyan noted that science is a unique field, as its funding grows parallel with increase of the state budget (the growth index for this year is 0.8%).

“We were able to finance 4 programs that will carry out special researches, aimed at solutions for defense problems, in the next 2 years,” he said.

Samvel Harutyunyan stated that the funded programs in defense sector are aimed at improvement of living conditions for serving soldiers and solutions for engineering, strategic and technical issues.

“Armenian scientists can solve any problems in this sector if they have orders given in the right directions. They proved it time and again. We have achieved quite significant success,” he said.