He said that the federal budget was going to allocate 19.8 billion rubles to that end. According to the minister, all the money will be allotted to raise the federal employees' wages.
In organizations run by Russian regions, he minimal wage will be raised as the region deems appropriate, he said.
At the same time, he went on, the Finance Ministry and the Health Care and Social Development Ministry were monitoring how Russia's constituent regions fulfilled their financial obligations before state employees. He promised federal help to those regions who happened to run out of money in doing so.
The Government estimates the total volume of wages in Russia at 470 billion rubles. According to Mr. Zurabov, the Common Social Tax is going to be reduced from January 1 next year from 35.6% to 26%, which will free about 41 billion rubles of potential wages, which could also be used to raise state employees' wages, he said.
On his part, chairman of the State Duma Labor and Social Policy Committee Andrei Isayev said the committee was going to endorse the bill in the first reading. He recalled that the 20-% increase in the minimal wage for the next year was more than the inflation rate. At the same time, he described this increase as "deficient."
If the poverty line is established at 2,940 rubles a month in 2005, the minimal wage will account for as little as 24.4% of it. With a new method of poverty line calculation which is going to bring a result of 3,200 rubles a month, this ratio will get down to 22.5%.
According to Isayev, the committee suggested that the minimal wage should be raised to 900 rubles a month within the next year, which he said would consume another 10 billion rubles from the budget.
