In his address to parliament on December 29, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced that the concept of minimum consumer expenses would be introduced in Uzbekistan from March 1, 2021. The head of the department of the Ministry of Economic Development and Poverty Reduction, Ilkhom Mamatkulov, spoke about what the minimum consumer expenses is and why this method of determining the level of poverty has been chosen.

According to him, the Ministry of Economic Development, together with other authorities and research institutions, as well as experts from international organizations, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program, is introducing minimum consumer spending as an alternative to the concept of a consumer basket.

Ilkhom Mamatkulov explained that different methods of determining the poverty threshold are used in the world - absolute, relative, the method of deprivation, multidimensional, based on calories consumed, and others. The minimum consumer spending is used in developed countries and is based on the latest developments and calculations of specialists, he said.

Minimum consumer spending takes into account the daily needs of a person for food and non-food products, as well as services. This method involves determining the basic costs required to calculate a person's daily budget, said the head of the department.

He said that the Statistics Committee annually keeps records of 10,000 households. Based on these observations, surveys are carried out, based on the results of which the volumes of real consumer spending of households and consumed goods will be determined.

An alternative tool is to determine the poverty level based on the median income. This method has been introduced in Russia since 2021, where the cost of living is set at 44.2% of the median income for the previous year.