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This will have a lighter impact on inflation and exert lower tax pressure on businesses, Getmantsev believes.
The next stage of minimum wage increase to UAH 6,500 may be postponed until December next year, as offered by Danylo Getmantsev, head of the parliamentary committee for finance, tax and customs policy, MP with the ruling Servant of the People party.
In an interview with the TSN, Getmantsev explains that it is necessary to upgrade payments, while it is impossible to do it all at once.
"Therefore, we are revising these standards gradually. Incidentally, prior to our move to raise the minimum wage to UAH 5,000, a third of workers lived below the absolute poverty line. That is, they earned less than they needed to physically survive. Every month, the Ministry of Social Policy recalculates the actual subsistence minimum. In July it was UAH 5,050, and we raised [minimum wages] to UAH 5,000. In other words, we did not raise the minimum wage to this level, but we're close. Next year we should cross this minimum threshold. The raise will be 9.3%," MP said.
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"Therefore, it seems to me that the optimal amount for raising wages is UAH 6,000, not 6,500. So I would stop at UAH 6,000," he said.
To a clarifying question that the 2021 budget provides for an increase in the minimum wage to UAH 6,500, Getmantsev said: "It does. But I would postpone the increase until December 1, 2021. Then, I believe, we will pass this year alright. After all, this will have a lighter impact on inflation and exert lower tax pressure on businesses."