BOGOTA, (Reuters) – Poverty in Colombia has fallen compared to 2020 in an economic recovery. However, they have not returned to the levels of before the coronavirus epidemic, according to Tuesday’s government statement.

According to the government’s DANE stats agency, Colombians are now living in poverty at 39.3%, compared with 42.5% for 2020. This figure stood at 35.7% for 2019.

Juan Daniel Oviedo, director of DANE said during a live conference that “even though we’ve seen substantial recoveries between 2020-2021″, they weren’t enough to allow peoples’ real per capita incomes to rise in real terms over 2019”.

The agency said that extreme poverty has fallen to 12.2% in 2021, which is a drop from 15.1% last year.

This was in conjunction with an economic recovery. Latin America’s fourth-largest country experienced 10.6% growth last year.

Out of a total population of 50,000,000, 19.6 Million Colombians were living in poverty as of 2021. 6.2 million live in extreme poverty according to DANE.

The agency reported that 1.4 Million people were out of poverty last year and 1.3 Million left severe poverty.

Last year’s poverty in Colombia’s urban areas was around 37.8%. Extreme poverty was 10.3%.

According to DANE, poverty is defined as someone who survives on less than $3 per day. Extreme poverty means that the person lives on just $1.36 per day.