Komsomolskaya Pravda: "The prime minister suggests raising salaries for teachers of universities and vocational schools"
The Government Presidium sums up implementation of federal targeted programmes for the previous year
Before the meeting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin decided to conduct a brief poll of his subordinates.
"Mr Siluanov, why do we have such a huge budget deficit for the first part of the year?" Putin asked the finance minister. The budget deficit exceeded 245 billion roubles in the first two months.
"Our ministries and agencies have been using budget allocations stipulated for this year more actively than before," Anton Siluanov said, explaining the temporary deficit.
He noted that the budget revenue was also ahead of plan by about a quarter, mostly due to soaring oil prices – one barrel costs more than $120. Also, the government stashed 200 billion roubles in a rainy day fund but did without it.
Minister of Communications and Mass Media Igor Shchyogolev arrived at the meeting with a piece of good news.
"According to the UN, Russia has moved from 59th to 27th place in the rankings of government electronic services delivery in the last two years. Experts say Russia really took off this year in this regard. We have done a lot to make this happen. Now we are the leaders in Eastern Europe and are behind only the United States and Japan among major countries," he said.
Last year the government spent more than one trillion roubles on federal targeted programmes on high technology, infrastructure, demography, education and healthcare.
"This year we must raise school teachers' salaries to match the national average," Putin said. "I'm confident that we will be able to achieve this. The decision has been made. We must also increase the incomes of university teachers. And there is one more problem -- we have forgotten about technical and vocational schools. Do you have any suggestions?
"We have launched a number of programmes in the regions to promote salary increases for technical college employees," Minister of Education and Science, Andrei Fursenko, said.
At the end of the meeting the prime minister touched on one more sensitive issue – defrauded equity investors.
"Last year we commissioned more than 170 buildings. So, 17,000 people received flats," Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin said. "We have made this kind of progress for the first time. Work is underway on the remaining 650 buildings. I hope we'll be able to complete them this year," he said.
Andrei Zaitsev
