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Moscow copes with main pandemic-caused problems, says mayor

He said the pace of recovery was higher than the experts had expected

MOSCOW, July 9./TASS/. Moscow has coped with the main problems emerging from the coronavirus lockdown, and sales of its enterprises of trade and services, public catering, as well as small and medium-sized businesses have already returned to the 2019 figures after restrictions were lifted, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin told a session of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives’ supervision council on Thursday.

"Of course, the pandemic, which is not yet over, came as a tremendous trial for us, but I hope that we have coped with the main problems. The measures that you (President Vladimir Putin - TASS) voiced and that the city has put in place, ensured systemic support for the business of the damaged sectors in general," the mayor said.

"We can state today that trade, services, cash flow of the small and medium-sized businesses, as well as public catering have reached the level of 2019 after the restrictions were lifted," the mayor said.

He said the pace of recovery was higher than the experts had expected. Among the tasks of the near future, the mayor mentioned the importance of maintaining the main investment projects in the infrastructure sector in order to support investment of private companies, private investment. As a rule, the proportion of this investment is Moscow is one to three - for every ruble coming from the state, three come from investors, Sobyanin said.

"If we ensure support for the investment climate not only from the point of view of administrative procedures, but investment from the state, we will certainly get reaction from the investors. We believe that it is possible to keep in general the investment potential that we accumulated in the previous years," Mayor Sobyanin stressed. "And this will be the basis for our moving ahead," he added.

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 12,000,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 552,300 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 7,000,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

To date, 707,301 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 481,316 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 10,843 fatalities nationwide.