Putin: Poverty spreads, 13.5% of Russians below poverty line

MOSCOW, Dec 17 (PRIME) -- The coronavirus pandemic has hit Russia hard, and poverty spread to 13.5% of Russians as of the end of 2020 from 12.3% in 2017, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday during his annual news conference.

“In 2017, we reached the threshold of somewhere around 12.3% of the people below the poverty line, while now, all these problems pushed the level to 13.5%, and it is obviously a high number, around 20 million people,” he said.

The current situation in Russia is tough due to the pandemic.

“The situation is difficult, I said that right at the beginning. And when I said that the pandemic means closure of many companies, higher unemployment, contraction of incomes and real disposable incomes of people, these were not just words, this is not a thing you can simply walk away, that we see that and we understand that,” he said.

One of the main directions of the government’s work is to reduce the amount of people below the poverty line to 6.5% of Russians in 2030 from the current figure of 13.5%. “This is bad already that the goal will stay at 6.5%, but we have to be real here. This is an ambitious goal, and it is a real one,” he said.

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