Agenda: implementing the President’s Executive Order on the mandatory sale of a part of currency proceeds; additional allocations on high-tech medical treatment; improving the system of support for families with children; subsidising pay hikes to employees of social security medical assessment boards; priority funding of infrastructure projects.
Government meeting
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Colleagues, good afternoon,
The President has signed an executive order on the mandatory sale of currency proceeds on the Russian market for individual companies. This will make it possible to create long-term conditions for enhancing the Russian market’s transparency and predictability and to cut down on opportunities for financial speculations.
The Government has drafted a directive on the amounts of earnings derived from transactions under foreign trade contracts and the timeframes for their crediting to authorised bank accounts.
This decision will make it possible to balance demand and supply and enhance trade predictability, which is of importance for many Russian producers purchasing components, equipment and other products abroad. And, of course this will benefit Russian citizens, who need high-quality and affordable goods.
I would like to say more on another decision.
The President said that an effective, up-to-date healthcare system was of paramount importance for people’s safety.
This year, the Government will additionally allocate 24.5 billion roubles for specialised, high-tech treatment at federal institutions under the compulsory health insurance programme.
Therefore, the total sum slated for these purposes will amount to almost 190 billion roubles.
Today, over 300 federal clinics offer free medical services in serious cases with a doctor’s prescription, including complicated non-urgent operations that are not available in regional hospitals. The residents of all Russian regions have a right to such treatment.
Increased funding will increase the availability of medical services. People throughout the country will have more opportunities to improve or restore their health.
Let’s move on to our agenda.
We will begin with the important task of improving the system of assistance for families with children.
Parents on childcare leave receive special monthly allowances for children aged up to 18 months. Today, such allowances are only paid to the mothers and fathers who do not work, work part-time or from home.
As per the President’s instructions, the Government has drafted amendments to legislation to pay such benefits to working parents. Those parents who opt to return to work will be able to receive both their wages and child allowances for 18 months after childbirth. The allowances will also be paid if parents decide to work for a different employer during the childcare leave without resigning from their previous job.
We will submit these bills to the State Duma. We hope they will take effect as soon as next year, and our citizens, those who wish, will have an opportunity to resume their career after giving birth to a child without losing state support.
The next issue has to do with the implementation of the President’s May executive order under which wages in the public sector must not be lower than the average wage in the given region, while the wages of doctors, university professors and researchers must be twice the average monthly wage.
We previously allocated over 30 billion roubles for increasing the wage fund for some groups of employees of federal medical, scientific, cultural and educational establishments. Today, we will approve the allocation of approximately 700 million robles for increasing the wages of employees in social security medical assessment institutions.
The President emphasised that we must not slacken our attention to public sector professionals. Their wages must continue to grow like throughout the economy.
I ask the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection to closely monitor the transfer of funds to recipients in all constituent entities of Russia.
Another issue on our agenda concerns increased roadbuilding. The President pointed out that it is possible to achieve the planned road repair targets ahead of schedule and that we must not let up the pace. As per the President’s instruction, we will additionally allocate about 60 billion roubles this year for the priority financing of dozens of infrastructure projects. All of them are vital for the socioeconomic development of a number of regions, like the renovation of a bridge in Oryol and the construction of a new exit route from Ufa, which will be completed this year. Other projects have to do with building Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Khasavyurt and Naberezhnye Chelny bypass routes and roads throughout the country.
We will also speed up the construction of infrastructure on the M-12 motorway towards Yekaterinburg, which will allow us to open all the sections of the road to traffic by the end of 2024.
This will make the cities and towns of our large country more comfortable for people and businesses.
Let’s begin the discussion.
