MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. Although poverty grew in Russia amid the pandemic, the authorities managed to curb its growth by employing selective measures to support the public, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.
He was asked to comment on a recent statement made by businessman Oleg Deripaska. Earlier, Deripaska criticized Russia’s Federal Statistics Service saying that the real number of Russians with incomes below the subsistence level is several times higher than the statistics service had reported.
The Kremlin official agreed that the pandemic’s consequences for global and national economies were unfavorable and the number of poor people in Russia has increased.
"At the same time, the growth was not as high as it could have been and the well-thought-out selective measures of support for the population amid these hard times have worked," he emphasized.
The press secretary assured that the authorities are "mulling over how to keep up this support and what should be done."
"Fighting poverty is one the main priorities of the government and the country’s leadership," he stressed.
Going back to the businessman’s statement, Peskov noted that Deripaska is "a quite experienced entrepreneur," who has "an enormous knowledge of economics" and is "a quite large employer himself."
"But one should take into account that Rosstat operates with a wide and verified array of data. And, of course, the government is first of all guided by the data provided by Rosstat," he concluded.
When asked why big business "does not believe in overcoming poverty" nationwide, the Kremlin official responded by saying: "You need to ask big business that.".