Agenda: draft federal laws, budgetary allocations.
Government meeting
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
Before we turn to the main items on today’s agenda, I would like to say a few words about a decision taken at the instruction of the President: the Government has renewed the subsidised mortgage programme for families. Initially scheduled to expire in about eighteen months, it will now run until the end of 2023. Moreover, it will be available not only to parents of two or more children, but also when the first child is born into a family.
This programme addresses a number of important objectives. It helps young families become homeowners at an annual interest rate of 6 percent. In addition, this loan can go towards acquiring an apartment, as well as building a single-family home. This subsidised rate will apply to the entire lending period.
In order to enact these changes to the programme, the Government more than doubled the lending ceiling to 1.7 trillion roubles. Extending the programme and increasing its funding are expected to enable more young parents to buy homes, as well as to support a number of industries and sustain demand for goods and services that people need in this connection, from building materials to furniture and all the small stuff.
The agenda for today’s Government meeting calls for a discussion on supporting low-income families with children between three and seven years old. The President instructed us to pay them monthly allocations on a per child basis. We will allocate over 21 billion roubles to this effect, adding to the 254 billion earmarked this year for the Russian regions.
Government meeting
Targeted support of this kind is very important for parents with children, and even more so when facing financial hardship. The amount will vary from one family to another, depending on the specific financial circumstances of every household. I would like to ask you to keep a close eye on the situation in order to ensure that people receive the money they are entitled to on time.
Today, we will also review amendments granting additional social guarantees to orphans. Youngsters growing up without parents, which can occur for a number of reasons, benefit from various subsidies and preferences when attending universities and vocational schools. In fact, the state provides for all of their financial needs, covering clothes, shoes, food, healthcare services, transport expenses and textbooks.
We intend to expand these social benefits to school students who lose both parents or, for a single-parent household, one parent. Orphans who turn 18 years old before graduating from school and continue their studies will also benefit from this programme.
This would be a fair thing to do. These young people find themselves in challenging circumstances. It is essential that we provide everything they need to give them a normal life.
Supporting regions is another item on the agenda.
The Government is carrying out a wide range of initiatives to provide good housing, roads, modern hospitals and outpatient clinics, schools and kindergartens.
We need to discuss a number of other questions. During our working trips, we meet people who bring up problems they care about. Substandard housing is definitely one of them. Overall, we constantly hear about the need to improve infrastructure quality.
We have heard that 14 regions are ready to build over 40 major infrastructure facilities ahead of schedule. Other regions are launching fast-track procedures for resettling people from substandard housing.
We will allocate about 20 billion roubles to this effect from spending factored into the budget for the next two years. This way, we will be able to ensure that construction time stays reasonable. Most of this amount, over 13 billion, will go towards enabling people to move into new homes.
We need to use all the available proactive construction and resettlement mechanisms so that people do not have to spend years waiting for their apartments. Plus, we need to build the necessary infrastructure as soon as possible.
