Number of poor people in Macedonia growing

Sofia. There are more and more poor people in Macedonia. Poverty grows among unemployed people in particular, as well as among people without university/ college education, or without any education at all, and among elderly people, the Macedonian Utrinski Vesnik writes.
According to the latest data of the State Institute of Statistics about 30% of the country’s population, or over 600,00o people, live under the poverty threshold in the period 2004-2006.
In the meantime the state strategy for fighting poverty, which was drafted a few years ago with the support of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has given no result so far. According to the strategy the problem could find solution in decreasing the unemployment rate and increasing the level of education among the poor social layers. However, no obvious results have been achieved in this direction by any of the governments since the implementation of the strategy, the newspaper comments.