Companies@UA: База компаний Украины

Moscow. July 17 (Interfax) - Overall wage arrears in Russia declined 18% in June 2009 following growth of 10.8% in May, the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said.

Wage arrears stood at 7.194 billion rubles on July 1 versus 8.779 billion rubles on June 1, making June the second month this year besides April in which wage arrears contracted.

Arrears caused by a lack of funds at companies declined 18.4% top 6.294 billion rubles in June.

Around 270 million rubles of this debt was public sector wage arrears caused by delays with transferring budgeted funds - down 8.4%, or by 25 million rubles, from June 1, including 152 million rubles in debt from the federal budget (an increase of 9.8%, or 13 million rubles), 80 million rubles in debt from regional budgets (a 4.3% decline, or 3 million rubles), and 38 million rubles in debt from local budgets (a 47.7% decrease, or 35 million rubles).  Some 400,000 employees, or about 2% of the work force, were owed back-pay as of July 1. Most of them were employed in the manufacturing sector (56%), agriculture (11%), construction (11%), transport (9%), subsurface mineral extraction (3%) and culture, education, health care and social services (2%).  Between June 1 and July 1, 2009, total wages owed by companies decreased in 58 Russian constituent regions and rose in 24. The biggest regions by volume of wage arrears caused by liquidity problems were the Khabarovsk territory (6.8%, or 473.1 million rubles), Moscow (6%, or 416.7 million rubles), the Krasnoyarsk territory (5.9%, or 408.9 million rubles) the Chechen Republic (4.2%, or 290.2 million rubles), the Moscow region (3.5%, or 244.6 million rubles) and the Kirov region (3.4%, or 233.1 million rubles).

No wage arrears caused by delays with transferring federal budget funds were observed in 58 Russian constituent regions as of July 1. The Primorye and Khabarovsk territories as well as the Orlov, Samara and Novosibirsk regions accounted for 70.2% of the total amount, or 106.7 million rubles, mainly in the construction, manufacturing and science sectors.

Wage arrears caused by delays with transferring regional budget funds were observed in 12 Russian constituent regions as of July 1. The Moscow region accounted for 51.8% of the total debt.

No wage arrears caused by delays with transferring local budget funds were observed in 61 Russian constituent regions as of July 1. Chechnya (10.6 million rubles), the Kaliningrad region (4.5 million rubles) and Irkutsk region (3.9 million rubles) accounted for almost 50% of the total debt.