Government 2021-2026 The report on the progress and results of the 2025 implementation of the action plan, to put it mildly, raises more questions than it answers, especially with regard to records related to unemployment and poverty.

On page 23 of the report, it is written about unemployment. “The unemployment rate was 11.8% in the third quarter of 2025, compared to 13.3% in the same quarter of 2024 and 16.4% in 2017.“. However, the full picture is not presented here. We are talking about a quarterly indicator.  2025 annual data have not yet been published. And the last available annual indicator refers to 2024, when the unemployment rate was 13.4% in 2023. 1.0 percentage point more than the indicator, that is, instead of decreasing, it increased. It turns out that, despite the recorded economic growth, the unemployment rate has increased in 2024.

According to the target set by the government’s plan (page 22), the unemployment rate by 2026 should be below 10%. However, existing trends already suggest that this target will not be achieved. It is practically impossible to reduce the unemployment rate by 3.4 percentage points within two years, because even in the years of high economic growth, such rate of reduction was not recorded. Such was the case, for example, in 2022-2023. the period when the largest decrease in the unemployment rate in conditions of high economic growth was 3.1 percentage points.

The picture regarding poverty is no less problematic. On page 63 of the report there is the following record. “The poverty rate continued to decrease, from 25.7% in 2017 to 21.7% in 2024, and extreme poverty from 1.4% to 0.6%.”. However, the most important thing was bypassed here: the government’s 2021-2026. comparison with program targets. Meanwhile, by 2026, it is planned to to halve the level of poverty (p. 21), and to completely eliminate extreme poverty (p. 67).

When you put the numbers side by side, the picture becomes more than telling. Poverty level doubling means that it should decrease from 27% to 13.5% in 2020. But taking into account the 21.7% poverty level registered in 2024 and, in general, the dynamics of the past four years, it is frivolous to expect a sharp turnaround, even with extremely optimistic estimates.

In the case of extreme poverty, the situation is more worrying. Over the past four years, it has decreased by only 0.1 percentage points, from 0.7% in 2020 to 0.6% in 2024. Meanwhile, the government promised in its plan that extreme poverty should be completely eliminated by 2026. In this case, the wording in the government’s report can be considered as an attempt to ignore one’s own statistics. 

Summing up, let’s emphasize once again that the unemployment rate has not been brought to the target announced by the government, poverty has not been halved, and extreme poverty has not disappeared. And no matter how much the report tries to single out positive episodes, the general picture does not change. there are promises left on paper, and there is reality, which stubbornly “does not comply” with official reports. This has become a familiar scenario in the case of the current government. We see the same in other areas, where high percentages of economic growth were presented as evidence of universal prosperity, while the average citizen did not experience this “growth” in his life. Or when the expansion of social programs was presented as an alleviation of poverty, but in reality they often only mitigated the effects, not eliminating the causes.

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