Poverty rises and affects almost a third of Peruvians

He Executive confirmed what was an open secret: poverty increased during 2022, after no progress was made in terms of reducing and fighting this scourge.

Thus, the number of citizens in a situation of vulnerability rose compared to the previous year (2021), where it was estimated that more than 8 million Peruvians were still precarious.

“Despite the fact that we had made a containment of 30% to 25%, today the evaluations have given us two more points and we are over 27% in poverty”he claimed Julio Javier Demartini MontesMinister of Development and Social Inclusion (Midis).

In detail, in 2021, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), poverty levels reached 25.9%, which represented a setback of 4.2% compared to the figures for 2020, which they reached a peak of 30.1% as a result of the severe blow of the pandemic.

Previously, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) had indicated that no reduction in poverty was expected for 2022 due to high inflation —which reached its highest level in 26 years and reached 8.46%— and the low advance of the national economy, which was 2.68%.

unfavorable outlook

Last week, the MEF announced the reduction of its estimate of GDP growth from 3.5% to 2.5% for 2023. Although it indicated that Peru maintains the highest progress in the region, it continues to be below what achieved in 2022. Along these lines, the World Bank (WB) also projected a maximum advance of 2.4%. According to the entity, “low economic growth directly affects poverty reduction.” Therefore, the shortening expectations for this year remain limited.

The key

Pandemic. In 2020, poverty had a strong rise and More than 9.9 million people were reported in a situation of poverty. Figures for 2022 would be close.