Enhancing poverty measurement, monitoring and analysis in Russia

	Content: Main Goal and Tasks of the Project Project Implementation Period Expected Main Outcomes Project Management and Structure Action Plan				Also important:   Poverty Assessment Report on Russia   List of Call For Papers Winners (PDF, 5 kb)   Download Presentation (PowerPoint, 20.4 kb)   Open Memorandum of Understanding (PDF, 355.2 kb)   Basic principles of the project of cooperation in improving monitoring, measurement and analysis of poverty in Russia (DOC 19.2 kb)

Main goals of socio-economic development of Russia as well as the main directions of cooperation between Russian Government and the World Bank comprise the foundation of the Project. They are emphasized in the following documents:

• Mid-term Socioeconomic Development Program of the Russia Federation till 2004
• Country Assistance Strategy (CAS)

This Project is focused on reaching the following tasks, described in the document "Basic principles of the project of cooperation in improving monitoring, measurement and analysis of poverty in Russia" (ZIP 18 kb):

• Elaboration of such indicators as number of poor people and revealing the "groups at risk", lack of which leads to ungrounded forecast of the cost of state-budgeted programs and bills and makes it difficult to assess the budgetary requirements;
• Development of the mechanism of collecting the reliable gross data, on which Russian statistical practice is based, in a way that they would reflect all the possible characteristics for the analysis of the poverty structure and would not contain serious discrepancies;
• Elaboration of more effective instruments for statistical study of poverty and new methods of using the statistical observation results for analysis and forecasting.

Furthermore, there is a need to generate a consensus on the set of poverty estimates for Russia, a move that is expected to enrich the policy debate on attacking poverty. These estimates should be based upon common and agreed-upon approaches to data source, variables, which reflect the welfare level, and definitions of the poverty line.

For the Project launch and execution, on April 16, 2002 the MLSD of Russia (in the person of First Deputy Minister Mr. V. Yanvarev ), Goskomstat of Russia (in the person of First Deputy Chairman Mr. A. Surinov), the World Bank (in the person of Director for Russia Mr. J. Schweitzer) and Department for international Development, UK (in the person of the First Secretary of the Development section of UK Embassy Mr. M. Harris) have signed Memorandum of Understanding, in which main goals and tasks are described together with major expected outcomes, implementation period of realization and distribution of authority.