It turned out how they reward and fine deputies of the State Duma

The other day, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, reporting to State Duma deputies, promised to increase the minimum wage in Russia from 2024 by 18.5%. The people’s representatives greeted these words with thunderous applause. Now the minimum wage is 16,242 rubles a month, and will rise to 19,242 rubles.

“MK” studied the accounting of the members of the lower house of parliament themselves. Previously, this information was in the public domain: just before April 1, the deputies had to publicly report on their income. Now, as you know, this information is considered confidential.

During Mishustin’s speech in parliament, a small incident happened. The deputies repeatedly accompanied the speech of the Prime Minister with applause (having counted to 25, the author simply lost his way), but Artem Kiryanov, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Economic Policy, outstripped all his colleagues. “He applauded so zealously and jumped up from his chair,” the MK source notes, “that when he did it again and saw that he refused to be alone, he blushed terribly and sat down in his place.”

This was followed by a remark by Duma speaker Vladimir Volodin: “Not only is criticism unacceptable, which is what affects certain factions of the State Duma, but also approval,” he said at the same meeting. True, the chairman of the lower house of parliament did not name anyone specifically.

And we, having learned about the upcoming increase in the minimum wage, decided to find out: what is the income of the deputies themselves based on?

Parliamentarians have never been poor. In 2013, the salary of a deputy was about 165 thousand rubles. After that, their salary rose to 254 thousand per month. This was done to equalize the monetary remuneration of people’s representatives with the salary of federal ministers.

Last year, Vladimir Putin decreed that from September 1, 2022, each MP should receive 420,000 rubles a month. As a result, the deputy salary is 15 times higher than the average salary of ordinary Russians.

But there are also nuances. According to the deputies themselves, payments can vary significantly from month to month, and their accrual is controlled exclusively by the Ministry of Finance. Quarterly bonuses and other financial incentives for the work done range from 60 to 80 thousand rubles.

“On the first day of each month, we receive a pay of 260,000 rubles, in the middle of the month an advance payment is 160,000 rubles,” a source in the State Duma shares with MK. – The average salary of a deputy is plus or minus 464,000 rubles per month. We subtract 13 percent – it turns out 403,000 rubles.

The payment for one working day depends on the number of working days in a month. For example, in February there are 18 working days, which means that one working day is 25,783 rubles, and after deductions, 22,431 rubles.

In March, 22 working days, a working day costs 21,095 rubles, after deductions 18,352 rubles.

If a deputy becomes ill, one day of sick leave is paid in the amount of 2,736 rubles minus 13% = 2,380 rubles.

Missing a working day without a good reason in this convocation will cost the deputy 22,000 rubles. In the last convocation, they were charged 60,000 rubles a day for absenteeism.

The size of the pension directly depends on the size of the salary: 47,000 rubles – with an experience of up to 10 years (for two convocations) and 67,000 – with an experience of 10 years or more.

94,716 rubles is the salary from which the pension of a State Duma deputy is calculated. If the work experience exceeds 10 years, then the pension will be 75% of this salary, if less than 10 years, then 50%.

So the long, prolonged applause of Mr. Kiryanov can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, why not applaud the smart, sensible speaker. On the other hand, how pleasant it is that the minimum wage indicators, voiced in the government’s report, are terribly far from the servants of the people.

And how accurate our figures are, we will find out in April: several deputies, despite the possibility of not doing this, said that they would nevertheless publish their income declarations.