Appearing at the Duma plenary session on Friday, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the government is ready to discuss the minimal wages and preservation of the state labor-remuneration guarantees. The government also supports the Duma-submitted "social-package" proposals. The package includes the provision of medicines, commuter travel and health center treatment to people on the welfare.
"For the first time country-wide we ensure for our citizens equal access to benefits irrespective of their regions of residence," Kudrin stressed.
He agreed with parliamentarians that the government is ready to prepare for second reading the text of the draft without changing the concept in general.
He also noted that before the year end all federation entities and bodies of self-government should adopt their own laws in keeping with the draft.
Kudrin believes that the regions have enough resources to ensure benefit payments to citizens in full measure.
Commenting on criticisms that the draft law "has not been sufficiently prepared and calculated," Kudrin noted that, after seceding from the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), countries of Central and East Europe have also adopted laws canceling benefits or replacing them by monetary compensations. Belarus and Kazakhstan have also followed suit. "We propose the smoothest and appropriate transition to a new system of provision of benefits," the finance minister said.
As regards the provision of monetary compensations to people on the welfare at the level of federation entities, Kudrin recalled that many regions "have gone further, long neglecting the scanty federal mandates."
At a plenary session on Friday, the State Duma adopted as basic the first-reading government draft law on benefit payments.
The draft consists of amendments to 155 legislative acts and proposes the recognition of 41 laws as losing validity.
It proposes converting, beginning on January 1, 2005, benefits for some citizens to monetary payments (the total of 171.2 billion rubles), coming from the federal budget (1 dollar approximately equals 29 rubles).
Today the treasury pays about 40 billion rubles to finance benefits.
It is proposed to allocate from the state budget 3,500 rubles to make up for benefits to Heroes of the Soviet Union and Russia; 1,500 rubles to veterans of the Great Patriotic War; 2,000 rubles to war invalids; 1,400 rubles to category 1 invalids; 1,000 rubles to category 2 invalids, disabled children and persons disabled from childhood; 800 rubles to category 3 invalids.
Adjusted to inflation, benefits are going to be indexed just as compensations to the basic part of labor pensions, which are planned to be paid coincidentally with the monetary compensations for benefits.
