BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov.17
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
Unemployment in Georgia will increase by 4 percentage points by 2020, Trend reports via the National Bank of Georgia.
According to this forecast, the unemployment rate will reach 16.3 percent this year and it will decrease by 0.5 percentage points in 2021 and by an additional 2 percentage points in 2022.
The Georgian government estimates that about 100,000 people lost their jobs during the current pandemic. The program of unemployment benefits has been running for the last 6 months and has been giving monthly assistance from those who had salaries up to the first quarter of 2020 but have since lost income.
This assistance was issued for 6 months, however, it was terminated for the citizens immediately if other income in the amount of more than 10 lari ($3.04) was recorded in their account. According to official statistics, 161,905 people have benefited from this assistance at least once during May-September.
By months, compensation recipient statistics are as follows:
May - 14.42 million lari ($4.3 million) was transferred to 72,131 persons;
June - 28.76 million lari ($8.7 million) - transferred to 143,801 persons
July - 25.48 million lari ($7.7 million) - transferred to 127,430 persons
August - 19.35 million lari ($5.8 million) - transferred to 96,765 persons
September - 18.26 million lari ($5.5 million) - transferred to 91,315 persons
According to the World Bank, by 2020, up to 160,000 Georgian citizens may be in poverty.
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