Agenda: Indexation of retired military personnel’s pensions, expansion of the free retraining programme, additional financing of disability benefits, and support of companies that create intellectual products.
Government meeting
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
Let us begin with the issue that all retired military personnel are waiting for us to address. In line with the President’s instructions, a bill has been drafted on indexation of their pensions by 8.6 percent. Military pensioners and persons of equal status will receive such an additional payment, including those who served in the internal affairs agencies, the National Guard and firefighters.
The payment will be accrued from 1 January 2022, in the same way as it has already been done for other pensioners.
I would like to ask members of parliament to examine the draft law as quickly as possible so that people receive higher pensions on time and in full.
A few words about another signed document.
The Government continues to support the labour market. In the previous two years, the market was hit hard by the spread of the coronavirus. Many people had to change their job, and some were left without work. The President then instructed the Government to do everything necessary to restore employment. To this end, we took comprehensive measures, including to expand the free retraining programme for our citizens as part of the Demography national project.
Now it will be available not only to older people and mothers with small children, but also to young people under 35 without vocational education, including those who have been unemployeed for more than four months after the army or after graduation. The relevant resolution has been signed.
This measure will give young people the opportunity to receive additional education or a more in-demand profession. To this end, we will allocate almost 1.2 billion roubles from the budget.
In total, almost 150,000 people will be able to take part in the retraining programme this year. More than 8.5 billion roubles will be allocated from the budget for such purposes.
We will continue to create conditions so that our citizens can find attractive jobs and improve their standard of living.
Today, there is another issue on the agenda that concerns the coronavirus response. The epidemiological situation is quite difficult, since there are many sick people. Accordingly, more people are on sick leave.
The Government will allocate over 76.5 billion roubles additionally to pay benefits for February sick leaves and those that will be issued in the first half of March this year. This will make it possible to keep the Social Insurance Fund’s budget balanced, so that citizens receive the funds they are entitled to in a timely manner and in full.
We will also continue to work on improving legislation in the interests of business.
Amendments to the Tax Code, which will introduce benefits for a number of companies, have been drafted for today’s meeting. This will allow organisations not to pay income tax for creating the results of intellectual activity, provided that the copyright to the property has been identified since 1 January 2022.
The preferential regime will be valid for large companies for three years, and for small and medium-sized businesses for five years. Thus, it is precisely those entrepreneurs who actively implement new developments of the latest generation, invest in research and develop start-ups that will receive advantages from these benefits. The President also spoke about the need to provide state support to such technologies of the future.
A similar regime came into effect four years ago. The benefit was valid for two years, and even in such a short period, it helped to better protect the interests of Russian right holders.
We are now not only resuming the preferential regime, but also extending its timeframe so that all entrepreneurs have time to formalise their rights, and thus to increase the intangible assets of Russian companies, making them more attractive for investors, for gaining access to foreign markets.
