Translated material
Unreal sector
The government's legislative plan for 2009 has not been tested by the crisis
The legislative activity of the government for the next year, 2009, is all the more relevant today, the more intense the economic and financial crisis flares up. However, the government presidium had to discuss the pre-crisis plan for the legislative activities of ministries and departments for 2009, since there is simply no other way.Prime Minister Vladimir Putin began yesterday's meeting of the government presidium not with the main issue on the agenda - the actual legislative plans of the cabinet - but with a report from Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. As you know, Mr. Kudrin has just arrived from the G20 financial summit in Washington .
The country's chief financier assured Mr. Putin that "a new financial architecture has already begun to take shape." That by the end of March new rules for reporting and risk calculation will be adopted, and as a result, “a report will appear that will be a response to the challenges of our time.” General anti-crisis coordination will be introduced. But Mr. Kudrin considered Russia’s main victory to be “strengthening the role of third countries” in the still unclear contours of the new financial architecture. “In the coming months, Russia will join the Financial Stability Forum. This is an informal club with the participation of government, private, and scientific organizations that develop all the rules of the global financial market,” explained Mr. Kudrin.
Prime Minister Putin, as usual, brought the issue to the political plane: “Everyone understands that this work will only make sense if it is equal, and will not be reduced only to attempts to use our resources to solve problems that arose not because of us.” wine." “Yes, absolutely,” Mr. Kudrin hastened to assure the head of the cabinet. “That’s the only way. These are the principles: parity, fairness and transparency of work,” he said.
“We have always fulfilled our obligations and been reliable partners,” the prime minister added, just in case. And he moved on to government legislation, which, as it turned out, was not going well. Before the discussion began, Mr. Putin essentially had nothing to say other than announcing the number of bills announced for the coming year. There were 37 bills for 2009 in the Cabinet of Ministers' stash.
Mr. Putin's dissatisfaction ultimately resulted in a dry decision by the presidium to “accept the legislative activity plan as a basis.” The first and main complaint, as one of the participants in the discussion told Vremya Novostey, is the irrelevance of the plan due to the emerging economic and financial problems - simply put, the crisis. At a briefing in the White House, Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov had to take the rap for the “uninteresting document,” who himself, apparently, was not delighted with the legal creativity of ministries and departments. And yet he somehow tried to explain himself.
“The plan was developed before the crisis and concerns the general optimization of financial institutions, antitrust legislation, long-term development of the banking sector, misuse of insider information and market manipulation,” the Minister of Justice began the justification story. It became clear that the plan did not provide answers to modern, as government officials like to say, “challenges”.
In particular, the plan did not include bills concerning the fate of the value added tax after the actual increase in the unified social tax announced on January 1, 2010. As Mr. Konovalov explained to Vremya Novostey, there are no ideas on VAT in the plan’s tax innovations. The minister does not comment on this position.
The only thing that was said quite confidently was that the plan for draft laws of ministries and departments for 2009 could change by 50%. In a month, approximately 30 projects will be added to 37. If possible, relevant ones.