Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a working meeting with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov
Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:
Vladimir Putin: Mr Luzhkov, what are the results of the year? Are you pleased?
Yuri Luzhkov: Yes, Mr Putin, everything is in order.
Vladimir Putin: I see that the average monthly wage in Moscow has grown by 17.9%.
Yuri Luzhkov: Yes, that's right.
Vladimir Putin: Very good.
Yuri Luzhkov: It is already approaching the level of developed East European countries. But we are not going to stop there. And of course labour productivity must match the growth of wages. But we do not intend to stop. The most important thing for us is the situation with the old and younger generations. We have decided that beginning from February the government pensions plus the city's allowance exceed the living minimum by 25%. It is a very good decision and it is being put into practice. And we have increased the living minimum four times this year, after every quarter. It is growing in connection with price rises and inflation, and we constantly change the level of the city's markups. By the end of the year we will have a coefficient of 1.5, and beyond that, time will tell. We set the target of increasing the markup and the government pension which will grow in July.
On housing. Housing construction has been proceeding according to plan. Once again I am reporting to you, Mr Putin, that we have solved the problem of housing for servicemen. The targets you set have been fully met. We built more housing for servicemen in time for Victory Day and we are fulfilling our commitments as planned. Construction is underway in Shcherbinka, which was in dispute.
Housing for cheated interest-holders. We touched upon that topic when you were in Kurkino. We will fully settle this problem before the year is out. Perhaps a very small part will carry over into the beginning of 2009. We had 3,371 such families. All their problems will be solved with the exception of those who bought several flats, I call them not cheated interest-holders but "co-investors". Some problem firms such as Social Initiative intended to earn money by cheating people, they offered to sell housing at lower prices and people bought five flats at a time. That is not the same as the people who pinched and saved money to buy one flat.
Vladimir Putin: Not for personal use.
Yuri Luzhkov: Not for personal use. We call them co-investors. There are not many of them. They are an absolute minority, and we do not compensate their losses. We will give them one flat, which they are entitled to, and as regards the other flats let them settle their accounts with the firm of which they were partners.
Vladimir Putin: Do we still have the rising birth rate? Is the death rate falling?
Yuri Luzhkov: Yes, Mr Putin. Last year, as you know, because you have backed the idea, we declared the Year of the Child. More than 102,000 Muscovites were born, the highest number since 1988. In the interval between 1988 and last year there was a dip when we had 60,000 newborns. That is a huge drop. Speaking about demography, the demographic balance, those were very hard years. This year has seen an increase and of course we will exceed last year's figure especially since the Year of the Family you have announced is a programme that is working in the city and yielding results. There are more people wishing to expand their families. We are encouraging it. Take for example, the child allowance. Eight or nine years ago we had only one such allowance and today there are 15 varieties of it. If it is a single mother, it is one level, if it is a family with many children, another level. If there are disabled people in the family, it is a third level. And so on.
Mr Putin, Muscovites have welcomed your decision to hold a government meeting on the transport problem.
Vladimir Putin: I was just going to mention it. One of the main problems is the infrastructure in Moscow.
Yuri Luzhkov: Yes. In my time I objected to the shutting down of the Road Fund. Allright, let bygones be bygones. Having done that, we lost a great deal when all these expenditure items in the budgets were "deleted", as they say. There has been some road building, but it has been absolutely insufficient. That needs to be rectified.
Vladimir Putin: We should take a closer look at it. I am determined to hold a Government meeting on this theme.
