Verkhovna Rada deputy Boryslav Rosenblat, PPB says that the increase in the minimum wage it is a necessary step for further reforms.
"I don't want to get ahead of it, but we have drafted bills on mandatory health insurance and pension insurance ... This cannot be realized without an [increase] in minimum wages. We just have to go along this path. We have to pay people minimum wages above the subsistence," Rosenblatt told a roundtable conference in in Gorshenin Institute on 31 October.
"We have to balance since January 1 people's minimum wages and subsistence level, to give them hope to survive," the lawmaker said.
He expressed confidence the money to improve the minimum wages can come from the "deshadowisation' of economy. In Rosenblatt's opinion, the legal extraction and export of amber can generate billions of dollars into the nation's coffers and so would putting the gambling business into the legal framework,
"The legalization of all illegal businesses would give us the [much-needed] money. Businesses will unlikely start paying officially declared salaries any time soon," says Rosenblat.
He lashed out at grievances voiced by many entrepreneurs who claim that their businesses would become unprofitable after the increase in minimum wage.
"You know what? Everything is unprofitable. It is unprofitable to pay taxes, but how we should maintain the army, from the Pension Fund?" Rosenblat argued.