The head of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia Maxim Reshetnikov announced the need to change the methodology for collecting data on the income of the population to improve their counting, make it more reliable. According to him, the published data is called “very large discussion,” reports TASS.
The Minister noticed that the income of the population is the key direction of modernization of statistics. And while there are constant discrepancies between the data on the income of the population in the system of national accounts and operational quarterly data.
After some time, the gap decreases, however, noted the official, quarterly data is important for decision-making in the field of social and budget policy. Because of these problems, many issues are discussed on the basis of inaccurate statistics. In his opinion, it is necessary to expand the composition of sources of information to make calculations more complete.
“People, of course, begin to compare it with their personal incomes, with their salary, pensions, social benefits,” reminded the reshetnikov.
In 2019, Rosstat stopped publishing monthly data on the income of the population, only quarterly statistics remained. A year before this, the revision of the methodology helped the department dramatically increase the revenues of Russians – together by 1.75 trillion rubles. Because of this, the recession of citizens in 2014-2018 turned out to be much lower than it was thought.
In 2018 and 2019, a new methodology has even ensured income growth. But the crisis of 2020, associated with the coronavirus pandemic, reset it. As a result, the situation rolled back to the level of decade ago.
Income data for the first quarter should have been published on April 21, but they were seized from a general report. In Rosstat, they explained that the collection of information demanded additional time, so this statistics will be brought later.
Earlier, the department announced a decrease in poverty in Russia in 2020 to 12.1 percent (17.8 million people), which was the minimum since 2014