REUTERS
Coronavirus-related developments in 2020 have changed the country's social and economic situation.
Ukraine's Social Policy Ministry predicts poverty in Ukraine will grow to 45% by late 2020, which is 6.5 percentage points higher year-over-year (y-o-y).
According to M.V. Ptukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, poverty in 2019 was 38.5%, which was 4.7 percentage points lower than in 2018.
"Thus, media reports about a 'sharp increase in poverty from 27.2% to 43.6%' according to UNICEF are incorrect and need to be clarified," the ministry said.
The monitoring of poverty indicators for the nine months of 2019 showed a positive trend towards a reduction in poverty in Ukraine.
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According to the ministry, absolute poverty (when household income is below poverty line) for the nine months of 2019 decreased to 41.4% against 45% in 2018.
"Over the past three years, Ukraine was confidently moving out of crisis and there was a real chance it might have reached the 2008 level (prior to the economic crisis) in terms of poverty. Absolute poverty (when household income is below poverty line) decreased from 58.6% in 2016 to 43.2% in 2018," the ministry said.
Yet, developments related to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 have changed the country's social and economic indicators.
As UNIAN reported earlier, according to UNICEF's worse-case scenario, the number of poor people in Ukraine may grow by over 9 million, including almost 2 million children.
Commenting on the UNICEF forecast at a press conference on May 20, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a wage of UAH 5,000-6,000 (US$188-226) is low, but it is not poverty.