Paul Goble
Staunton,
February 10 – Thirty-seven percent of Russians life on 19,000 rubles or less a month,
Rosstat says, a figure that works out to a subsistence of ten US dollars or a
less a day, 23.2 percent live on less than 15,000 rubles a month (under seven dollars
a day); and 12 percent have incomes under 10,000 rubles a month (five dollars a
day).
Only
11 percent, have incomes of 60,000 rubles or more a month (30 dollars plus a
day) (gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/ru/statistics/publications/catalog/doc_1140086922125
and discussed at newizv.ru/news/economy/08-02-2019/tsifra-dnya-37-rossiyan-zhivut-menshe-chem-na-10-v-den).
Given that Rosstat has a reputation
for spinning its data to make the situation look better than it in fact is, the
real situation may be even more dire. But as Novyye izvestiya says, even these figures cannot be interpreted as
other than a clear indication that a very large swath of the population lives
in abject poverty.
According to surveys conducted by
The Conference Board and Nielsen consulting companies at the end of last year, “23
percent of Russians do not have money even for clothes. All of their income
goes for the most necessary expenditures like food and payments for communal
services,” the Moscow paper says.
And that figure is up by four
percent from a year earlier, when only 19 percent of Russians were in that
position. It is thus no surprise, Novyye izvestiya continues, that Russians
“do not believe they can cope with inflation which in January alone was one
percent” over all and as much as 20 percent for some basic products.
There is no sign that things are
about to change, the paper says, noting that whatever Kremlin propagandists
say, officials in the now see things continuing as they are or getting even
worse: the Central Bank, for example, this past week kept a key interest rate
on loans at 7.75 percent, something it would not have done if the future looked
brighter.
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