Minimum income threshold or minimum consumer spending as put by the authorities has been announced in Uzbekistan. This figure stands at 440 thousand soums, or 41 USD per person per month, the Ministry of Economic Development and Poverty Reduction said.

The head of the department of the Ministry of Economic Development and Poverty Reduction, Ilkhom Mamatkulov, explained that different methods of determining the poverty threshold are used in the world - absolute, relative, deprivation method, multidimensional, based on calories consumed, and others. Minimum consumer spending is used in developed countries and is based on the latest developments and calculations of specialists and is considered an alternative to the concept of a consumer basket.

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.

The indicator was calculated based on the goals and objectives:

• for introduction of an indicator to determine the target group of the population in need of material and other social support from the state;
• for the use of minimum consumer spending to determine the poverty line and take into account the real consumer properties and needs of the population in the target group;
• improving the effectiveness and targeting of goals and measures identified in poverty reduction strategies and programs, along with their ongoing monitoring.

Based on these goals, a pilot survey of 5,400 households selected from all provinces of the country in 2020 with the support of the World Bank was carried out as an experiment to calculate the minimum consumer spending.

At the same time, the households participating in the survey were divided into ten groups according to the size of their expenditures, and 30% of the households with the lowest expenditures (incomes) were identified from these families.

Based on the data obtained as a result of the survey, the minimum consumer spending on the basic daily consumption of food (2,200 kcal), non-food products and services per month amounted to 440 thousand soums per person (taking into account the price changes in the current year).

The ratio of the calculated minimum consumer spending to GDP per capita is 26.8%, in developing countries it is mainly 4-20%, noted the Ministry of Economic Development and Poverty Reduction.

To complete the experiment on calculating the minimum consumer spending in 2021, the State Statistics Committee, together with the World Bank, will conduct a survey of 10 thousand households. Based on the findings of these surveys, by the end of this year, it is planned to approve the methodology for calculating the minimum consumer spending and publish its update value.