| The government's business plan has been sent for revision The government is rapidly mastering a new method of work. From now on, ministries will plan goals for themselves in order to obtain funds for them. It remains to figure out how to evaluate the results of departments’ work in the new conditions. Every minister wants to be political, but no one wants to bear political responsibility.
Yesterday at a government meeting when discussing a new method of budget planning - based on the result - Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the cabinet members who worked on this problem could not agree among themselves who would be responsible for this result. Either the government as a whole, or an individual minister and his subordinates.
Mr. Kudrin referred to the example of Great Britain, where the minister of finance is essentially a political figure, and often the prime minister cannot interfere in his affairs. “The Prime Minister gives ministers political responsibility, final and complete, for certain indicators,” said the head of the Ministry of Finance. “We don’t have such a mechanism for planning and distributing political responsibility, and so we constantly argue about this.”
Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who interrupted his vacation for yesterday's cabinet meeting, appreciated the desire of the Russian Finance Minister to be like his English colleague - i.e. to be "the second person in the cabinet and a big political figure." And he reminded Mr. Kudrin that the administrative reform was done in order to sharply increase the responsibility of ministers. “Our ministers are actually political appointees. And we are talking about their effectiveness,” the prime minister said.
In addition to the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Agriculture Alexei Gordeev was also seriously concerned about who would ultimately be responsible for the result. He raised this issue twice until he received a comment from Deputy Prime Minister and main speaker at a cabinet meeting, Alexander Zhukov, who made it quite clear: the government bears political responsibility for meeting the indicators. And he immediately added: “Although it is not difficult to determine the responsibility of ministers.” A little later, at a briefing, Mr. Zhukov noted that political responsibility could result in resignation. On this note of optimism for the public, the discussion about the political role of ministers ended.
The government took as a basis the report of Mr. Zhukov “on the plans and performance indicators of budget planning subjects” of ministries, services, and agencies. The prime minister said that “we are moving in the right direction” and that “only the presentation of the first version of the report on reforming budget planning took place.”
Perhaps for the first time in recent months, Mikhail Fradkov publicly praised the head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, German Gref, for rethinking the place and role of his department within the cabinet. “The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade can take a completely new level,” the prime minister said. Mr. Gref himself also very positively assessed the work done by the departments. Noting that there are still many shortcomings and some ministries are approaching the idea of budget reform formally, he spoke in the spirit of liberalism, namely: in favor of involving civil society in the discussion about the indicators and goals of the government.
The Minister of Economy was supported by Mr. Zhukov, who said that the government intends to introduce into the consolidated plan indicators for assessing the effectiveness of ministries and departments, which emerged through a survey of the population. The prime minister also advocated “open government.” He even readily responded to Mr. Zhukov’s remark, who proposed opening socially significant indicators of law enforcement agencies to the public. “This is not only possible, but also necessary,” said Mr. Fradkov. Meanwhile, the security forces remained silent and did not take part in the discussion of “civilians.”
The Kremlin sent a good mark to the government in connection with the beginning of budget reform. Presidential Adviser on Economic Affairs Andrei Illarionov brought good news. He called the “Report on the plans and performance indicators of budget planning entities” “a most serious document.” And the plans and indicators themselves, in his words, “look ambitious and real in a good way.” “This is an innovative document,” the adviser concluded.
True, as is customary among senior comrades, Mr. Illarionov warned the government about the risks and dangers on the innovative path. First of all, he advised, one should be afraid of inflated statistics. The presidential adviser could not ignore the main economic task - doubling GDP. Here he chided the government a little, noting that for now it is targeting a period of ten years to achieve this goal. And we should consider the option of eight years. And then, in his opinion, the rate of economic growth should be increased from 7.2 to 9% per year.
This proposal seems to have come as a surprise to government members. Here we would have to reach 7.2%, but the bar has already been raised. However, the discussion on the topic of doubling GDP did not stop there. It turned out that the government, in general, does not care by what time this task is completed. According to Mr. Zhukov, it is possible by 2010, or perhaps by 2012 - as, in fact, is proposed in the report reviewed by the ministers. It's just that in the first case the year 2000 is taken as the starting point, and in the second - 2002. As the Deputy Prime Minister noted, it is not difficult to change periods, since “the pace will be approximately the same.” It is noteworthy that in the report presented by Mr. Zhukov, GDP growth for 2004 was fixed at 7%, while on Monday the Deputy Prime Minister himself pleased the President by revising the forecast to 6.9% (last Thursday German Gref said that growth GDP in 2004 will be 6.7%). Moreover, the assessment contained in the report exactly coincides with the consensus forecast compiled from surveys of about 30 Russian and foreign expert centers. The results of the survey were published yesterday by the Development Center.
Meanwhile, a number of experts who are familiar with the government’s new program and target indicators have doubts that these indicators will be achieved. The problem is that the measures proposed by many ministries and departments to achieve the goals they have set themselves require in many cases a significant increase in funding. A situation may well arise in which responsibility for failure to achieve one or another goal will simply be shifted to the Ministry of Finance, which has “squeezed in” the necessary amounts. Maybe that’s why Mr. Kudrin so persistently asked at yesterday’s government meeting who would be responsible for the results. Vera KUZNETSOVA, Mikhail VOROBYEV |
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