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Minister of labor and social protection Anton Kotkov appreciated the chance to halve the level of poverty in Russia to 2024. He told this in an interview in the program “Posner” on channel one, TASS reports.

In his words, to achieve poverty reduction by half by 2024 it will be difficult. However Kotyakov said he did not consider it impossible, because there are a number of tools that can help reduce poverty.

He also said that Russia remains a strong differentiation of incomes between rich and poor. “A very small number of citizens can be attributed to a number of people with a stable income,” he added, answering a question about whether he agrees with the fact that the gap between rich and poor is a serious problem for Russia.

Earlier Kotkov predicted increase in the number of unemployed in half. According to him, soon the official number of unemployed will rise to 2.5 million people. Just last week, the number of unemployed increased by 300 thousand people and reached 1.6 million. The number of unemployed will rise in may and June, said the Minister.

In April, the rector of the Higher school of economy Yaroslav Kuzminov stated that as a result of the economic crisis associated with the pandemic coronavirus, the middle class may slip into poverty. He also suggested that revenues will fall from all segments of society, however, “impoverished rich” will still be rich.