Annual Address to the Federal Assembly.Part 7
May 10,2006.
Marble Hall,the Kremlin, Moscow.
Послание Федеральному Собранию Российской Федерации.
10 мая 2006 года.
Москва,Кремль,Мраморный зал.
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 countrys 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 dont 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 were 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 lets 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.
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