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Taking part in the meeting were Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, Presidential Aide Maxim Oreshkin, Minister of Labour and Social Protection Anton Kotyakov, and Deputy Finance Minister Pavel Kadochnikov.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, welcome again.

I would like to sum up some results of our discussions, meetings we had recently on social policy, including the meeting held yesterday. We discussed crucial issues, which, of course, our people are worried about. They are related to increase in incomes, improving wellbeing and the quality of people’s lives, which, in fact, concern everyone.

Let me stress the following: the social block is key to our state policy and is a key priority of the federal budget. State Duma deputies are also working hard on it. In this context, I would like to outline a number of issues that require joint action of the legislative and executive powers.

First, the draft federal budget for next year now envisages adjusting the subsistence level by 2.5 percent. Of course, this is not enough, because such parameters lag significantly behind the current inflation rate, which has accelerated in recent months.

I suggest setting a higher subsistence level for 2022 and increasing it at a faster pace than inflation, by 8.6 percent. In absolute terms, the average subsistence wage in the country must reach 12,654 rubles a month, which is 1,000 rubles more than today.

Let me add that the subsistence minimum is related to many social benefits, such as payments to families with children, additional social payments and pension supplements; therefore, it is not the absolute figure that is important, but what it is related to. And let me remind you that these benefits are paid to millions of our citizens. Of course, these payments will also grow.

Second. Under the Russian Constitution, the minimum wage cannot be less than the subsistence minimum, which means the minimum wage should increase along with indexation of the subsistence minimum. Next year, it should also grow by 1,100 rubles, or 8.6 percent. Thus, the minimum wage next year will be 13,890 rubles per month.

This decision impacts many of our citizens, and again, the thing is that the minimum wage is used to calculate benefits for temporary disability and also serves as a guideline when setting salaries in the public sector, in economic sectors.

I would ask the Presidential Executive Office to prepare amendments on the increased indexation of the subsistence minimum and the minimum wage in 2022. In the coming days I will submit them to the State Duma, so I would ask the deputies to support them during the second reading of the draft law on federal budget.

And, finally, the third very important thing – no less important than the two points mentioned above: at the United Russia party congress, I said that the rate of pension indexation should be higher than actual inflation. At the same time, let me remind you that since 2019 we have strictly adhered to this rule. Today, given the significant increase in inflation, it would be a mistake to deviate from this principle.

Proposals on specific parameters for indexing pensions are now being worked out both by the Government and the Presidential Executive Office, and the deputies are considering this issue as well. We will return to this in the near future taking into account how the macroeconomic indicators develop. We also talked about this yesterday, I would ask you to keep this in mind and submit proposals soon.

 Thank you very much.

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