At a meeting with President Vladimir Putin outside Moscow, Boris Gryzlov also said that national investment programs would not cause higher inflation, called for drafting a national transport program, allocating agricultural subsidies, and banning export of round timber to stop smuggling.
Gryzlov who is also leader of the ruling pro-Kremlin United Russia party, said the lower house of the parliament would speed up adoption of a bill on maternity support in Russia as soon as the government submitted a legislative initiative to the effect.
"The State Duma has not received any legislative initiative [from the government]," he told a meeting between his party and the president. "Our spring session is ending on July 8 and we have virtually no time to adopt the law in theory."
But he added that United Russia could use its parliamentary majority and adopt the bill before the end of the spring session, laying down the figures that the president had mentioned in his state of the nation address on May 10.
In his address, Putin focused on the demographic crisis in Russia and said that monthly child benefits had to be raised from 800 rubles to 1,500 rubles ($55) for the first child, and mothers should be paid 3,000 ($110) a month for their second child. He also instructed the government to give women at least 250,000 rubles ($9,225) as financial aid following the birth of a second child.
Gryzlov said these figures had to be included in the 2007 draft budget but added that the 2007 draft budget the Duma had received from the government did not make it possible to reach many of the set tasks.
"We are not sure that the draft budget would allow us to resolve the tasks set," Gryzlov said.
He said the draft budget failed to provide for raising real public sector wages 50% in three years, bringing pensions in line with the minimal subsistence level, and allocating funds for the demographic project.
"We have asked these questions to the finance minister [Alexei Kudrin]," Gryzlov said. "I think this marked the beginning of a real zero reading."
The United Russia leader also said the procedure for adopting draft budgets had to be changed.
"We think the budget adoption procedure must be reviewed, and suggest that a draft budget for next year be adopted before the end of October of the previous year," he said.
The current procedure when draft budget is adopted toward December leaves no time for the regions to receive investment, and "we lose three months in the national development," he said.
Gryzlov also proposed banning sales of medicines that bear no protection against falsification.
"A government must issue a resolution to ban medicines that do not use technologies protecting them against forgery, from retail sales," the speaker said.
He criticized Health Minister Mikhail Zurabov who said that medicines imported to Russia in "gray deals" were almost equal in quality with those imported legally.
"We cannot put up with such things," Gryzlov said, adding that only 1% of antibiotics in Russia were domestically produced while in Soviet times the figure was 60%.
"We even have no raw materials for their production," he said.
The speaker also put the government under fire for poor control over the spending of the Investment Fund, which was set up in 2005 to develop infrastructure investment projects across the country with public and private financing.
"Six months have passed and the government has not transferred money from the Investment Fund for individual projects," Gryzlov said and called for tougher control over budget execution.
Talking about investment programs, Gryzlov said they would spark no inflation growth.
"We think that with the current macroeconomic policy, we will be able to use such amounts of funds that would not affect inflation," he said.
As for other national development programs, the speaker proposed drafting a program to develop Russia's transportation network financed by state and private funds.
"Russia can have a maximal number of transportation corridors going through its territory," he said.
At the moment, only 1.5% of international cargo transit goes through Russia, he said, and added that about 50,000 towns in the country still had only seasonal transportation.
The program must be financed with state and private funds, Gryzlov said.
The speaker also proposed banning exports of round timber because economic levers failed to resolve the problem when 50% of Russia's timber is being smuggled abroad. Gryzlov also called for buying timber processing equipment so that Russia could export manufactured products rather than raw materials.
In his final statement, the speaker said the government should allocate about 500 rubles ($18) per each hectare (2.5 acres) of farmland in subsidies.
"We have made some calculations together with experts who said that the sum should be 500 rubles for each hectare of farmland," Gryzlov said, adding that the Duma was considering a law on agricultural development in the second reading.
