Civil Servants Make Up 3.3% Of Russian Workforce - Finance Ministry

Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published September 23, 2019 | 05:12 PM

As many as 2.4 million people throughout Russia work in state and local public administrative bodies, making up 3.3 percent of all workers in the country, First Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko told Sputnik

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2019) As many as 2.4 million people throughout Russia work in state and local public administrative bodies, making up 3.3 percent of all workers in the country, First Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko told Sputnik.

"There are about 2.4 million people. It turns out that there are 163 [staffers] per 10,000 of the Russian population. This is 3.3 percent of the number of people employed in the economy," Nesterenko said.

According to Nesterenko, when comparing the numbers of civil servants in Russia and abroad, it would be appropriate to look at people employed in the public sector in general rather than just those who work for the government. As an example she cited France, where teachers and doctors are also considered government employees.

"According to the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development], about a third of the employed population of Russia can be attributed to the public sector.

But the largest share in the public sector workforce is occupied by employees of state-owned companies and state institutions. At the same time, the share of employees in public administration, military security and compulsory social security in the Russian economy is about the same as in Europe - from 6 percent to 9.5 percent, " Nesterenko noted.

The official said earlier in the day that the number of civil servants should be considerably reduced in order to increase the salaries of the remaining staff, all as part of a public administrative reform that is expected to be implemented in 2020.

The first mention of civil service reform in Russia's state apparatus goes back to Vladimir Putin's first presidential term in the early 2000s when he proposed that systemic changes in post-Communist entrenched bureaucracies be implemented so that the government could become more efficient.