Agenda: providing medications to benefit recipients, granting insurance and social pensions to children who have lost breadwinners, exposing cartel agreements among marketplaces, and offering tax incentives to companies assisting colleges.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:Good afternoon, colleagues,The Government meeting’s agenda includes an item on providing medications to benefit recipients. They receive various free medications and medical items, as prescribed by doctors. This concerns medical foods for children with serious diseases and disabilities.Today, we will allocate almost two billion roubles’ worth of 2022 budgetary funding for these purposes among the regions, and we will provide additional funding worth over one billion roubles.Federal support will make it possible to provide free medications to almost 3.5 million people for 12 months.It is important that people receive the medications they need on time. I am asking you to monitor this situation closely in every Russian region.Today, we will review legislative amendments for granting insurance and social pensions to children who have lost breadwinners. These amendments, due to enter into force on 1 January 2023, will no longer require benefit recipients to apply for such pensions in person.As instructed by the President, the Government is introducing this so-called social treasury principle so that people can obtain state assistance and various benefits in the most convenient manner and without any red tape.The pensions will be granted automatically, and the recipients will be duly notified.
Children’s representatives
will no longer have to contact the Pension Fund, nor will they have to visit
the relevant agencies and collect documents. A special database will receive the
required information from other agencies.
Proactively, that is, upon the occurrence of an event, there will be a recalculation of additions to pensions for northern work experience. They are paid to those who have worked in the regions of the Extreme North for a long time. The rural allowances paid to people who worked in the countryside will be automatically recalculated.
The new procedure is much more convenient for people and will help to avoid paperwork and save time.
We will also examine bills developed in line with the President’s instructions. They will make it possible to identify anti-market actions and cartel agreements among large internet platforms: marketplaces and aggregators.
Millions of people in our country use this technology in order to choose goods from several shops at once or order a taxi on a mobile app.
Such companies can influence suppliers and clients without selling anything and determine prices. The purpose of the amendments is precisely to ensure that such an influence does not lead to an unjustified price rise or restricted choice.
The amendments will also help entrepreneurs, in particular those who succeeded in creating a fast-growing business or startup. They will get more opportunities for equal competition on the internet, even with very large companies.
The new antimonopoly legislation should come into force next March. This will give everyone in the internet industry time to prepare and correct violations, if any.
We will also support the sphere of vocational education. In line with the President’s instruction, we will envisage a mechanism for additional tax incentives for companies that help colleges and other organisations training mainly trades workers for free.
They will have an opportunity to add such expenses – up to 100 percent of the sum – to an investment tax deduction, thus reducing income tax. This can be done in the Russian regions where the relevant legislation has been adopted.
Thus, Russian regions will be able to significantly expand support for specialised educational institutions and train more specialists across a wide range of areas, considering the needs of enterprises. This is exactly what was discussed just yesterday at the strategic session, including on education. I am sure that the demand for such professionals will only grow as we further develop our own production capacities in Russia.
