Armenia allocated 213 million AMD this year for the restoration of cultural monuments throughout the country. Some of the money will also go to archeological excavations. Vardan Parsamyan, who heads the Monuments Restoration Center, said that he hoped the government would realize the importance of these cultural monuments and thus allocate more funds in the future. The Center was established in March of this year, as a result of the consolidation of six separate agencies. It operates as a subdivision at the Ministry of Culture. Mr. Parsamyan said that, tragically, when it comes to preserving and restoring Armenian cultural monuments, we have been neglectful over the years. "It’s not a question of being neglectful deliberately. The government just doesn’t have the resources to do a proper job," said Mr. Parsamyan. He said that there were about 24,000 cultural monuments, including churches, throughout Armenia and that on average 80-100 million AMD is spent to restore one of them.