The UN Human Development Report 2003 was released by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday. This year's Report introduces a detailed new plan to meet the goals of the Millennium Development Compact which resulted from the UN's Millennium Summit held in New York in 2000.

As in previous years, the Report ranks 175 countries according to their level of human development. Armenia ranks 87 on this index, and falls in the category of middle development.

"Armenia continues to make every effort to meet not just its Millennium commitments, but also its commitment to its own people to sustain the economic growth that we have been registering. That's the main challenge now, to sustain that growth in order to achieve the necessary improvement in all the indicators which taken together reflect the conditions and standard of living, and create the human development index ranking," said Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian.

The Human Development Index charts life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rates, combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross educational enrollment ratios, and the Gross Domestic Product.

Although the initial printed report lists Armenia in 100th place, the data problem which initially led to this incorrect Human Development Index ranking for Armenia is explained on the Human Development Report website. In a letter to the Armenian Government, the Human Development Report Office also explains that despite an initial decline in the early 1990s when many Central and Eastern European and CIS countries experienced setbacks, the Human Development Index for Armenia has increased steadily.