Putin sees fight against poverty as main global task

MOSCOW, Jan 27 (PRIME) -- Elimination of poverty is the main task of the global community, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"In this context, I will further address the key challenges that I think the global community is facing. The first one is socio-economic," Putin said.

"According to the World Bank, the number of low income people in China fell from 1.1 billion in 1990 to less than 300 million in the last few years. This is China's success undoubtedly. In Russia from 64 million people in 1999 to about 5 million now. We think that this is a step forward in our country. In the main direction, by the way."  

According to the president, the rise of economic inequality leads to populism and social unrest even in the countries with stable civil institutions.

"We see a crisis of past models and instruments of economic development and higher social inequality on the global level and in some countries,” Putin said.

“We have talked about this earlier but today it causes sharp polarization of public opinion, triggers growth of populism, right and left radicalism and other extreme phenomena."  

He said that he thinks that future development of the global economy will be based on budget incentives.

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