Annual Address to the Federal Assembly
May 10, 2006 Marble Hall, the Kremlin, Moscow
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Distinguished members of the Federal Assembly,
Citizens of Russia,
The addresses of the last years have set out our main socio-economic policy priorities for the coming decade. Our efforts today focus precisely on the areas that directly determine the quality of life for our citizens. We are carrying out national projects in the areas of healthcare, education, agriculture and housing construction. As you know, the problems in these areas have accumulated not just over a period of years but over entire decades. These are very sensitive issues for people’s lives. We have had to build up considerable strength and resources in order to finally be able to address these problems and focus our efforts on resolving them.
(snip)
And now for the most important matter. What is most important for our country? The Defence Ministry knows what is most important. Indeed, what I want to talk about is love, women, children. I want to talk about the family, about the most acute problem facing our country today – the demographic problem.
The economic and social development issues our country faces today are closely interlinked to one simple question: who we are doing this all for? You know that our country’s population is declining by an average of almost 700,000 people a year. We have raised this issue on many occasions but have for the most part done very little to address it. Resolving this problem requires us to take the following steps.
First, we need to lower the death rate. Second, we need an effective migration policy. And third, we need to increase the birth rate.
The government just recently adopted a programme for improving road safety. Adopting a programme is easy, now we need to implement it. I take this opportunity to draw the government’s attention to delays and unjustified red tape involved in carrying out these kinds of tasks. I spoke about this issue in last year’s address, and the programme has only just now been prepared.
I am certain that other issues raised in last year’s address are also not always being resolved in the way they should be.
We are taking measures to prevent the import and production of bootleg alcohol. The national Healthcare project is rightly focusing on the detection, prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease and other illnesses that are high causes of death among our population.
Regarding migration policy, our priority remains to attract our compatriots from abroad. In this regard we need to encourage skilled migration to our country, encourage educated and law-abiding people to come to Russia. People coming to our country must treat our culture and national traditions with respect.
But no amount of migration will resolve our demographic problems if we do not also put in place the conditions and incentives for encouraging the birth rate to rise here in our own country. We cannot resolve this problem unless we adopt effective support programmes for mothers, children and families.
Even the small increase in the birth rate and the drop in infant mortality we have seen of late are not so much the result of concerted effort in this area as of the general improvement in the country’s socio-economic outlook. It is good to see this improvement, but it is not enough.
The work we have carried out on social projects over these last years has laid a good base, including for resolving the demographic problem, but it is still inadmissibly insufficient, and you know why. The situation in this area is critical.
Distinguished members of the Federal Assembly, you will soon begin work on the budget for 2007, the year of elections to the State Duma. Understandably, the budget adoption process will be determined in large part by your desire to do as much as you can for your voters. But if we really want to do something useful and necessary for our citizens, I propose that you lay aside political ambitions and don’t disperse resources, and that we concentrate on resolving the most vital problems the country faces, one of which is the demographic problem, or, as Solzhenitsyn put it, the issue of ‘conserving the people’ in the broad sense. All the more so as there is public consensus that we must first of all address this key problem affecting our country.
I am sure that if you do this you will reap the gratitude of millions of mothers, young families and all the people of our country.
What am I talking about specifically? I propose a programme to encourage childbirth. In particular, I propose measures to support young families and support women who decide to give birth and raise children. Our aim should be at the least to encourage families to have a second child.
What stops young families, women, from making such a decision today, especially when we’re talking of having a second or third child? The answers are well known. They include low incomes, inadequate housing conditions, doubts as to their own ability to ensure the child a decent level of healthcare and education, and – let’s be honest – sometimes doubts as to whether they will even be able to feed the child.
Women planning to have a child face the choice of either giving birth and losing their jobs, or not giving birth. This is a very difficult choice. The programme to encourage childbirth should include a whole series of administrative, financial and social support measures for young families. All of these measures are equally important but nothing will bring results unless the necessary material support is provided.
What should we be doing today? I think that we need to significantly increase the childcare benefits for children under the age of one-and-a-half.
Last year we increased this benefit from 500 roubles to 700 roubles. I know that many deputies actively supported this decision. I propose that we increase the childcare benefit for the first child from 700 roubles to 1,500 roubles a month, and that we increase the benefit for the second child to 3,000 roubles a month.
Women who had jobs but then take maternity leave and child care leave until it is one-and-a-half should receive from the state not less than 40 percent of their previous wage. We realise that we will have to set an upper threshold from which this sum is counted. I hope that the government will work together with the deputies to set this threshold. Whatever the case, the total benefit should not be lower than what a woman who did not previously work would receive, that is to say, 1,500 roubles and 3,000 roubles respectively.
Another problem is getting women back into the workforce again. In this respect I propose introducing compensation for the expenses families pay for pre-school childcare. Compensation for the first child would come to 20 percent of expenses, for the second 50 percent, and for the third 70 percent of the average amount the parents actually pay for the pre-school childcare facility.
I draw your attention to the fact that I said that compensation would be for the expenses the parents actually pay and not for the costs for the childcare facility. The regional leaders understand what I am talking about. It is up to the regional and local authorities to ensure that there are enough kindergartens and nurseries to cover demand.
We also need to work together with the regions to develop a programme providing financial incentives for placing orphans and children whose parents are unable to care for them in family care. We currently have some 200,000 children living in children’s homes and orphanages. In reality the number of orphans is far higher, but around 200,000 of them are in children’s homes. It seems to me that foreigners are adopting more of our children than we ourselves are. I propose that we double the benefit paid to guardians or foster parents of children and make it at least 4,000 roubles a month. I also propose considerably increasing the wage paid to foster parents from 1,000-1,500 roubles a month to 2,500 roubles a month. And we should also increase the one-off payment made to families taking in children, regardless of the form chosen for placing the child with a family, to 8,000 roubles, that is, equal to the one-off payment made for giving birth to a child.
I instruct the government to work together with the regions to create a mechanism that will make it possible to reduce the number of children in institutions. We likewise need to take care of the health of future mothers and newborn babies and bring down the infant mortality and disability rates.
I propose that we increase the value of the childbirth certificates that were introduced last year and have worked well so far. I propose that we increase their value from 2,000 roubles to 3,000 roubles for pregnancy centres and from 5,000 roubles to 7,000 roubles for maternity homes.
This additional money should be used for buying the necessary medicines for women and providing a higher quality of medical services. This must take into account the views of the patients themselves, the women, and I stress this point. We need to develop such a mechanism. This is not difficult to do.
We also need to move rapidly to adopt a programme to create a network of perinatal centres and ensure that maternity homes have all the necessary equipment, special transport and other technology they need.
Finally, and most effective in my view, is a measure to ensure material support. I think that the state has a duty to help women who have given birth to a second child and end up out of the workplace for a long time, losing their skills. I think that, unfortunately, women in this situation often end up in a dependent and frankly even degraded position within the family. We should not be shy about discussing these issues openly and we must do so if we want to resolve these problems. If the state is genuinely interested in increasing the birth rate, it must support women who decide to have a second child. The state should provide such women with an initial maternity capital that will raise their social status and help to resolve future problems. Mothers could make use of this capital in different ways: put it towards improving their housing situation, for example, by investing it in buying a house, making use of a mortgage loan or other loan scheme once the child is three years old, or putting it towards the children’s education, or, if they wish, putting it into the individual account part of their own old-age pension.
Experts say that these kinds of state support measures should total at least 250,000 roubles, and this sum should be indexed to annual inflation, of course.
The question arises of what to do with the families who already have at least two children. This is an important question and I am sure that the deputies will come to a carefully thought-through decision in this respect.
Of course, carrying out all of these plans will require a lot of work and an immense amount of money. I ask you to work out the obligations the state would increasingly bear in this case over the years and give the programme a timeframe of at least 10 years at the end of which the state can decide on future action depending on the economic and demographic situation in the country.
Finally, the money needed to begin implementing these measures should be allocated in the budget for next year. This mechanism should be launched starting on January 1, 2007. I also ask you to work together with the government on the implementation procedures for carrying out this programme I have proposed.
Concluding on this subject, I note that we cannot resolve the problem of the low birth rate without changing the attitudes within our society to families and family values. Academician Likhachev once wrote that “love for one’s homeland, for one’s country, starts with love for one’s family”. We need to restore these time-honoured values of love and care for family and home.
While concentrating on raising the birth rate and supporting young families, we must also not forget about the older generation. These are people who have devoted their entire lives to their country, who laboured for their country and who, if necessary, rose to its defence. We must do all that we can to ensure them a decent life.
As you know, we have raised pensions on a number of occasions over recent years, and ahead of the planned timeframe. Next year we will again raise pensions by almost 20 percent overall. The state is allocating considerable money to providing social benefits and guarantees for pensioners and veterans. We need to continue our programme for providing state-funded housing for pensioners and veterans, including through using additional funds that are part of the Affordable Housing project. I ask you to continue focusing on this work as a key priority.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com