Minimum wages need to be brought into line with subsistence minimum - Putin
MOSCOW. April 11 (Interfax) - Russian Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin has said he thinks a lot of attention has to be paid to the problem of property stratification in Russia, calling for mechanisms for making the minimum wage and subsistence minimum fairer.
"We still have a great amount of property differentiation. The incomes of the richest citizens are roughly - and this is our problem - sixteen-fold greater than the incomes of the poorest. And in recent years that disparity, unfortunately, has virtually not contracted," Putin said during an address to the State Duma with a report on government performance.
"We have to give this problem the closest attention," Putin said. "There are huge risks here - social, economic, and political," he said.
In Germany, Austria, and France the gap is five to seven-fold, the prime minister said. "This is generally considered by experts to be the most optimal. In the [United] States, the disparity is, like ours, fifteen-fold. And in a BRICS country like Brazil, it is 39-fold," he said.
"It is now necessary to return to resolving the most important task - the minimum wage has to coincide with the level of the subsistence minimum," Putin said. "The mechanisms for determining the subsistence minimum and minimum wage need improvement, making them more modern and fair," he said.