Besmisses

Drawing S. Arukhanov

The right ones had every chance to fail structural reforms and bring the country to default in 2003-2004

The problem is that under the flag of right-libella reforms in Russia, it is again realized that, extremely distant from liberalism. And when for this reason everything is once again covered with a copper basin, there will be talk about the fact that, you see, Westernism is not suitable for Russia, that we need a special path, Down with the gang of Gaidar and Chubais, Kudrin and Gref, Ulyukaev and Illarinov. There will be talk about the discrediting liberalism. Which was not

Apocalypsis-2003

It's no secret that the reforms must be rushed. Because at the turn of 2003-2004, a small end of the world is clearly predicted in the farm. And in order to avoid it or at least smooth out catastrophic consequences, the economy urgently needs to give a lot of tangible development impulses at once, so that it approaches the planned crisis in a good tone.

What will the Apocalypse will be? First: two years later, the country enters a protracted and deep demographic hole associated with the rapid aging of the population. That is, the smaller number of working people will be forced to contain an increasing number of old people and disabled people. This is a systemic prerequisite for the crisis, since it will inevitably lead to an increase in the share of GDP, directed to social needs, and not for development.

The second premise of the crisis. The aging of the fixed assets of enterprises by this time will reach a critical level of 60%, after which something will not only be unprofitable on such ancient machines, but also life-threatening. In general, production funds will have to be updated if we are going to have any industry in the future. This will require giant investments with which in 2003-2004 a serious problem will necessarily arise, since it is precisely these years that there is a peak of payments on external debt (17-18 billion dollars a year).

The right-winged idea of ​​the President of Alfa-Bank Peter Aven and the presidential adviser Andrei Illarionov that it is urgent to use the favorable oil conjuncture and direct the petrodollars not to the meaningless reserves of the Central Bank, but to maximize the repayment of external debt to smooth out the peak of payments, does not find understanding from the monetary authorities. The Gerashchenko team settled in the Central Bank, and she does not care about the debt situation, which the Ministry of Finance will encounter two years later. And the Ministry of Finance, led by Kudrin, behaves too carefully, fearing Kasyanov, on the one hand, and Gerashchenko on the other.

Plus, the chances are extremely small in the fact that in this critical period of 2003-2004 of Russia, the oil conjuncture will be good. Just because after a protracted paper there is always a catastrophic fall. Well, if not up to $ 8 per barrel, as it was in 1998.

All this is very similar to the landscape of the new default, which the ideologist of Russian liberalism Yevgeny Yasin managed to declare even extremely conservative in his assessments.

Structural hope

It is urgent to give the economy a powerful pulse to growth. The task is formulated to the limit simply: in a short time, create an economy of such a volume that would allow to pay external debt, not greatly gripping the investment picture.

Actually, the Center for Strategic Development of Herman Gref was created for this, which produced the offensive in Russia of the next era of liberal reforms. The right once again made themselves hostages of what will happen on the farm.

So far, the reformers are not able to give the economy any tangible impulses to the jerk. Reforms are seriously damaged in the process of coordination with all interested entities.

The main hope was for tax reform. According to the author of the new Tax Code, the Deputy Minister of Finance Shatalov, she had to eliminate the main horror of any enterprise - taxes on circulation. It is known that each percentage taken out of circulation means for an enterprise with conventional profitability the liquidation of 11% of profit. There were 4% of current taxes in Russia, that is, the state itself made unprofitable viable enterprises of the country. But it was not possible to eliminate the current taxes, since the governors who thus lost the income of the road fund have lurked. And the right, led by Kudrin, went to a compromise - simply because the Kremlin made them a bargaining coin in a bargaining with regions regarding administrative reform. And 1% of the four current taxes were left to the governors as a comforting prize. And the rate of income tax was nevertheless increased by 5%, and the excise taxes on gasoline were still increased by 5 times. As a result, a decrease in the total fiscal load on the business will not be 20%, as conceived, but at best 8–9%.

Plus, the reputation of the tax reform, of course, was soaked by Deputy Prime Minister Klebanov, who suddenly informed that the 13%low-low in the world, the percent income tax rate (for which many enterprises were seriously going to pay the salary of a 2), was introduced specifically in order to lure the shadowers and then the rate again increase and begin repression. Now, not a single sane manager of the enterprise will think to legalize black salary schemes.

Customs reform also left the government not at all in the form that the economy awaited. Although there was a significant simplification of customs tariffs, there are no unification of bets, there is still a large resource for the bribery of customs officers, which always increases the cost of business costs and in this sense prevents its normal profitability. Customs officers lay bones against unification. There is no doubt that the deputies will disfigure customs reform even cooler.

On the verge of another failure, the eternal struggle of the right with Russian monopolies. The crushing of monopolists would allow market, and not administrative ways to determine the price of gas, transport and electricity. The reform of the RAO "UES" was blocked by the Union of the Ministry of Energy and Minority shareholders of the RAO, to which Chubais has to listen. And in the government, tired conversations are increasingly heard that the crushing of RAO is postponed for two to three years. The Gazprom reform is blocked by Vyakhirev, and now the Deputy Prime Minister Khristenko, who has joined it, tells Novaya Gazeta that in the coming years it is not necessary to wait for the division of Gazprom. The reform of the MPS is inhibited at the level of the Minister of Antimonopoly Policy of Yuzhanov, who is not going to release from his hands the definition of tariffs for railway transportation. And so everywhere.

The ministries are still cut for their tactical interests, and we do not have a government in the sense of a team of people obsessed with reform. And there are clans. And instead of reforms, tasteless fruits of compromises are pouring on the economy.

And it is bad not only that as a result, the country continues to exist in conditions of monopolism (which, in fact, is disgusting, since in this situation the energy and transport costs of the rest of the business are overestimated). It is bad that this weakens the position of Russia in negotiations with the IMF and the world bank, and the success of the restructuring of the debt to the Parisian club is tied to this.

Investment hope

The state campaign looks absolutely pale to attract investment in Russian markets. Here the thesis was the thesis about the deprivation of the state apparatus. Import capital is not ready to go to a corrupt state, in which it is possible to capture entire oil companies using judges by bribing judges. Examples of “Montenegrneft” and “Variganneftegaz” are still discussed in the West as a mirror of Russian corruption.

The Institute of Presidential Plenipotentiaries could become a normal body of monitoring the activities of courts in the regions, for governors who have the habit of ordering judges. The idea is intelligible: to guarantee the subjects of the economy of any region life by law. Of all the envoy, only Volga Sergey Kiriyenko, who managed to finish many months of disgrace at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant, where the holder of 40% of the shares of Kahu Bendukidze was not allowed into the board of directors with the full connivance of the governor. All other envoy do not pursue any policies regarding the investment climate of their regions simply because they do not know such words - the military is too much. As a result, the Uralhimmash is a bloody war between the security structures of shareholders and creditors, Variganneftegaz still in the management of the Alliance, who had long repaid all the debts, and in the Far East, Nazdratenko who brought Dalenergo to bankruptcy, continue to exercise in energy creativity.

When the Chubais group lobbied for the vertical of power, it was not about the militarization of the state, but about creating a normal legal system for business. Well, it turned out that it turned out because they decided to compromise with the military and Ephesians. And this detail ruined everything. The devil is always hidden in small things.

Even in Moscow, custom -made raids of “people in masks” on absolutely idiotic occasions continue. After all, everyone knows who exactly paid the ridiculous visits of the FSNP and the Prosecutor General’s Office to Kadannikov, Potanin, Abramovich, Gusinsky, which each time led to the collapse of the Russian stock market. But Putin, without ceasing to talk about the deprivation of the special services, is in no hurry to dismiss the relevant deputy director of the FSNP and a particular deputy prospector, although with such a noise the cases begun were immediately closed behind the lack of corpus delicti.

In conditions when any investments in Russian enterprises are under a constant risk of collapse, depending on the will of a bribed judge or prosecutor, there will be no investment paper here. Not only the West will not invest, but also Russian banks that have accumulated 100 billion on deposits in the Central Bank. Everyone is afraid. And the state is engaged in compromises instead of reforms.

All this will lead to the fact that the economy will not receive incentives for a jerk. The Chilean reform model (the dictatorship of the law when building liberal market institutions) was produced, and as a result, the era of late Yeltsin continues: neither market institutions nor the dictatorship of the law - a solid economy of monopolies. In 1998, when an unfavorable conjuncture superimposed this, the case ended badly.

Precisely because the right ones compromised, as a result of which there was a rapid preparation for default under the flag of liberal reforms.

From the first lips

The situation is commented by Boris Nemtsov

- How liberal are the reform implemented by the current authority?

- Not enough liberal. But the government committed one distinct feat - conducted a tax reform. This is a giant success.

- The reform is not radical enough.

- There is such an opinion. Like, in the form of taxes, we will seize 33% of GDP from the economy, and the liberal model provides for no more than 20% of the exemptions. But we must proceed from historical realities. Well, we will not go anywhere from the fact that our pensioners are used to receiving a pension. We are forced to maintain an unchommitted socialist.

- Why did the failure with the abolition of current taxes come out?

- I would not call it a failure. Just one percent of four left until 2003. It really was a compromise with the governors. Putin needed administrative reform. One percent of the governors was left as a fee for this vote. And Kudrin simply had no choice. Otherwise, we would lose all the reform. Although he, of course, understands that the current tax seriously disfigures the entire construction of the Code.

-Do you have your explanation for Klebanov’s statement that the government will soon raise a 13%income tax?

- Do you need an honest explanation? I believe that this person has serious head problems. Just a huge trouble with this morphologically important organ.

- Do I write like that?

- Of course, write. Someone should once say about it. And this problem was also visible from its actions in connection with a well -known rescue operation.

- Why did the conversations about the crushing of Gazprom faded?

- This was a matter of time. Gref wrote in his program that RAO UES, Gazprom and MPS will be reformed according to a single scheme: state network, competitive production. This is approved by the government. And in Gazprom nothing will happen while Vyakhirev and his people are sitting there. They just have to leave. In general, any structural reforms in Russia will begin only when the sane management will come to Gazprom.

- The right tend in this regard to support the Voloshin project in Gazprom instead of Vyakhirev?

- Why? I have a complete feeling that this is not an economic project at all, but a political one. Is Voloshin going there to carry out restructuring? In my opinion, he is just interested in control over the company.

- But he goes there under the flag of the need to reform Gazprom. And he will not have another exit, how to crush.

- I would not occupy anyone's side.

I am more not even of the Gazprom section of the Gazprom section. I am worried about the courts. Nothing is done to strengthen the legal system. In the case of the Media Most, we will again demonstrate the complete squalor of the judicial system to the whole world. What investments in this situation can be?

- The government gives the economy enough impulses on the eve of the predictable crisis of 2003-2004?

- Of course, not enough, too many compromises due to the idiotic structure of the political space. But in a different way, it cannot be yet. But here I will express a paradoxical thought. Here the country constantly says that he wants investments. And her officials drive around the world and repeat that the new default is scheduled for 2003. Fools, or what? Who will give you what money?

Yes, there is a forecast of well -known structural difficulties. There is an understanding of how to overcome them. Well, you work quietly. Do you know how it all surfaced? We have a “unity” faction in the Duma. So, in this faction a constant crisis of ideas. And you somehow need to remind of yourself. Well, they reminded them.