PM: Social liabilities remain priority for Russian government

MOSCOW, Oct 1 (PRIME) -- Social liabilities remain priority for the government during the difficult times, each ruble should be spent to improve the lives of Russians, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Thursday at a government meeting.

“Even during these trying times, fulfillment of social liabilities and recovery of the Russian economy are still a priority. Each ruble should be spent on improvement of lives of people and solution of the tasks that our country faces and that were defined by the president,” he said.

He has signed a ruling to provide subsidies to the regions to upgrade healthcare, and the government will issue at least 500 billion rubles in the next five years, including 90 billion rubles to be spent in 2021 for the matter. The money should go on construction, maintenance, re-equipment of hospitals in rural areas and small cities, as well as hospitals in the regional centers, he said.

The government will prolong a moratorium on bankruptcy of businesses for three more months, until the end of 2020, he said.

He also called for members of the government to be careful in their public statements and to avoid ambiguity of words as it may have an impact on the price of shares of companies.

“Each word is carefully analyzed by businesses and financial experts. Verbal ambiguity about Russian public companies may be interpreted in a negative way and hurt share prices or investment decisions, or hurt the economy directly. I ask you to be more careful here,” he said.

He did not specify the reason of that request, but on September 25, the shares of Russian gas giant Gazprom slumped on a statement of a deputy minister that the government was discussing reduction of the company’s dividends as a way to finance improvement of gas infrastructure.

(78.7847 rubles – U.S. $1)

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