Russia sees decline in poverty in 2023 - deputy PM

MOSCOW. Feb 29 (Interfax) - Poverty in Russia may have decreased in 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said.

"I must say that data for 2023 [suggests] we are continuing to reduce poverty in our country. Whereas poverty indicators for the whole of 2022 were at 9.8%, we expect this figure for the whole of 2023 to be at 9.3%," Golikova told the Council on Guardianship in the Social Sphere during the Russia Expo at the VDNkh park and exhibition center on Thursday.

The country must reduce poverty to below 7% and to half that for large families by 2030, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his address to the Federal Assembly earlier on Thursday.

The poverty rate is calculated as a share of the population with an income below the minimum subsistence level as a percent proportion of the total population.