Putin finds Russian poverty 'unacceptable' and vows to halve it in 6 years
Putin has vowed to halve levels of poverty in Russia within the next six years, labelling the current situation as "unacceptable" in his annual speech before the two chambers of the Russian parliament.
Laying out his detailed economic plans for the next legislature on Thursday, Putin said the number of Russians living below the poverty line had already been halved from the 42.0m at which they stood in 2000, but added that it needed to come down further.
To achieve that, he announced that over the the next six years the Kremlin would spend 2.4trn roubles to support families in need.
"Russia is now a leading country with a powerful foreign economic and defence potential. But from the point of view of the extremely important task of ensuring people's quality of life and welfare we, of course, have not achieved the level we require. But we have to do this and will do this," he said.
In his last speech before the Russian elections in 17 days' time, he also laid out other key policies for his fourth presidential term. Thus, the Russian leader pledged to boost employment and longevity because "every person matters", using Japan and France as benchmarks of the life-expectancy rates he wants Russia to attain.
Another one of his overarching objectives will be to turn the country into one of the world’s main hubs for storing and processing data, expressing a keen interest in increasing technological progress (robots and AI).
Acting as a backdrop, experts at Rabobank pointed out how, for the first time in a decade, the majority of Russians favoured reforms over stability.
"After the presidential election Putin may also reshuffle the government. If pro-market friendly Kudrin holds a prominent role within the administration (there were speculations that he could even replace Prime Minister Medvedev), it would be an indication that President Putin fully endorses structural reforms," the experts said.
"This in turn would improve demand for Russian assets amongst foreign investors already encouraged by S&P upgrading Russia’s sovereign rating to BB+ from BBB-. The incentive to make significant progress on economic reforms may, however, weaken if oil continues to hold well above the official government forecast," they concluded.