Translated material
At your own expense
The government will not pay off the financial crisis with the money of future generations
Literally on the eve of Monday’s meeting of the presidium, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who returned from Sochi , was in the best mood, despite all the financial shocks. Before the general meeting of the members of the presidium in his newly opened office after renovation, he managed to have a heart-to-heart talk with the Chairman of the Central Bank Sergei Ignatiev, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, with the Minister of Communications and Mass Communications Igor Shchegolev, and then again with Mr. - Mr. Kudrin.With praise for the remarkable actions of the financial authorities, the prime minister began the meeting of the government presidium in the also brand new, just rebuilt and persistently gilded meeting room of the presidiums. Having greeted the head of the Central Bank, Sergei Ignatiev, who appeared for the first time in the new White House work format, Mr. Putin immediately gave him instructions. The Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance will soon have to “work through” the initiatives of deputies who seek to raise the bar on citizens’ deposits subject to compulsory state insurance. It turned out that the Central Bank has counter-proposals, which the prime minister called “reasonable and calm.” Somehow it immediately became clear that he liked them much more than the parliamentary ones .
From the Ministry of Finance, Mr. Putin requested the exact timing of the implementation of a complete anti-crisis package. Deputy Prime Minister Kudrin reported that his department will submit to the Duma on Monday a document allowing VAT to be paid in installments over three months starting October 1.
The Prime Minister also recalled the 250 billion rubles that the government intended to spend specifically in 2009 to support the stock market. Mr. Kudrin immediately announced that the Ministry of Finance would prepare appropriate changes to the three-year budget for 2009-2011 by the beginning of October and submit them to the Cabinet of Ministers. After these promises, the prime minister tried to specifically draw the attention of those present to the fact that he, even for the sake of killing the crisis, would not go into the National Welfare Fund, that is, into the reserve that the state leaves for future generations. “This needs to be done from current funds. And we have all the opportunities and additional income for this,” Mr. Putin said.
Yesterday, the Presidium of the Cabinet of Ministers approved the new government commission, its personnel and powers. This commission will deal with the difficult implementation of the general scheme for the placement of electric power facilities until 2020. It will be headed, as decided by the Prime Minister, who oversees the energy sector in the government, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin.
The creation of such a commission has been a long time coming. The former head of the electricity monopoly, Anatoly Chubais, himself spoke in the spirit that after the liquidation of RAO UES, there should be some kind of coordinator of the ongoing reform. We came up with a commission. According to Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, this will be a “coordinating, advisory body.” At the same time, the minister said, the commission’s decisions “will be binding on all departments that are part of it.” The minister found it difficult to explain why the decisions of the advisory body would become binding. But he said that business representatives will also be part of the commission.
Mr. Shmatko described the range of issues under the jurisdiction of the new commission as follows: “The most fundamental ones related to the development of the electric power industry.” As for tariff policy, the minister promised not to issue any commission directives, but admitted that conciliation procedures in this area are exactly what the commission should be doing.
Anatoly Chubais was not included in the new body. “He’s on vacation,” Mr. Shmatko said. “And when he returns, the format of future interaction will be clarified.” Later that same day, it became known that President Dmitry Medvedev, by decree, appointed Mr. Chubais as general director of the state corporation Rusnanotech. So now he has no time for electricity.