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Chernomyrdin Decrees New Welfare for Families

Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin on Tuesday ordered new state subsidies for young children and single mothers and raised salaries of Russian officials based in former Soviet republics.


Chernomyrdin, in a series of decrees published by the government information center, ordered the Finance Ministry to start social welfare payments to single mothers and families with small children.


The new subsidies will be calculated as a percentage of the minimum monthly wage, which is now 14,620 rubles.


He also ordered a 20 percent pay hike in hard currency for Russian government representatives in Georgia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.


Another decree said new Russian consulates would be opened in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Tajikistan and ordered the Finance Ministry to provide subsidies for them.


Finance Ministry officials were not immediately available to say how much the latest subsidies will cost the government.


The budget deficit ended 1993 at over 10 percent of gross national product.


The state budget for 1994 has yet to be officially approved by the government. Economists fear that the deficit will soar this year on trillions of rubles in credits for ailing industries and agriculture recently promised by the government.


Labor Minister Gennady Melikyan anticipated late last year that the social spending slice of gross national product would have to increase to 13 percent in 1994 from 9 percent in 1993, according to RIA news service.

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