Translated material
A Word about Igor's Campaign
Vladimir Putin established an anti-crisis government
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin began yesterday's government meeting with social care for citizens - he talked about the restructuring of mortgage loans and the availability of kindergartens, where compensation will now be not only for those citizens who use public preschool institutions, but also for those who prefer private ones . However, a sensation was soon born - Mr. Putin announced the decision to create a “small anti-crisis cabinet of ministers” within the current government. And without the participation of the prime minister himself. The new unified government anti-crisis commission will be headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.Not so long ago, on a “straight line” on television , the prime minister spoke about the global crisis as an unbridled force of nature and allowed extraordinary actions of his government as a reaction to what was happening. Yesterday he started doing this. The prime minister admitted that several options were tried to “develop a response system” to the crisis. One, for which First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov was responsible (here Mr. Putin accidentally misspoke, first calling “First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Ivanovich Sechin,” but immediately “corrected” to Mr. Shuvalov) are industry meetings, which should have given a complete picture of the state of our production. Until now, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov was responsible for the second aspect - the social one. From now on, the Prime Minister decided to join forces.
In war it’s like in war. There cannot be two headquarters and two commanders. “We need to unite these efforts so that we have one body. A single center where we could correlate social processes and those processes that are taking place in the economy, especially in connection with the global financial crisis, therefore I consider it necessary to create a single commission chaired by the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov,” announced his know-how -how prime minister. According to Mr. Putin, the commission will continue to work to ensure macroeconomic stability and increase the stability of the financial sector of the Russian economy, will begin to coordinate actions “to stabilize commodity markets, including tariffs for customs protection, support for supply and demand of domestic producers, development and coordination of systemic anti-crisis actions in certain sectors of the economy."
Vremya Novostey's sources in the Kremlin say that the idea of forming a special anti-crisis commission was discussed at one of the meetings with President Medvedev a month ago. Then it was decided that it was inappropriate to do this: “Everyone understood that Shuvalov was already working in “anti-crisis mode”, holding daily meetings, and besides, he headed the recently created presidential council for the development of the financial market,” explains the source. According to him, it was then decided to return to the idea of creating a special body only if it turned out that Mr. Shuvalov’s administrative powers would not be enough to effectively coordinate the work.
Yesterday's decision shows that at the highest level it was recognized that the powers given to Igor Shuvalov were not enough.
Prime Minister Putin said yesterday that the commission would “promptly combat negative social trends, including the growing number of unemployed.” Here Mr. Putin took a pause and almost solemnly said: “Today I will sign the corresponding order, I ask you to promptly implement it.”
To reinforce his words about countering negative trends, the head of government immediately ordered an additional 150 billion rubles to be allocated to support the labor market in 2009. Another 300 billion rubles will go to support the military-industrial complex and strategic civilian enterprises.
Deputy Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov, who commented on the results of the government meeting, said that last Tuesday the Defense Affairs Commission operating under the Ministry of Finance had already selected one applicant (but did not name the company) and issued him a loan under state guarantees of 1 billion rubles. At the same time, the deputy minister clarified that the Ministry of Finance does not fully guarantee risks for such loans - 70% in the military-industrial complex and 50% for other strategic enterprises.
In general, several conclusions followed from Anton Siluanov’s words. Firstly, the Russian government, like all other governments in the world, does not yet see the “bottom” of the crisis. Secondly, it (and here the Russian cabinet is not alone) finds it difficult to give even an approximate forecast of either the near or medium-term prospects for the development of the economic situation.
But Mr. Siluanov provided, if not shocking, then quite revealing data about today's economic reality. The level of income tax receipts in November 2008 into the budget system was only 38% compared to November last year. Next year, revenues to the budgets of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation from income taxes will decrease by 25-30%, and revenues from personal income taxes by 5-10%, he said (from which it can be assumed that either revenues will fall, or some they will go into the shadows, or both will happen at the same time). The Deputy Minister of Finance, having announced these not very pleasant figures, did not comment on the journalists’ question about new forecast indicators for the price of oil in 2009 and the ruble exchange rate. He said evasively that there was a scenario of 50 dollars a barrel, but there is another - more pessimistic. Since the 2009 budget was approved based on an average annual oil price of $95 per barrel, sequestration looks almost inevitable.
As for the formation of an “anti-crisis headquarters” by Vladimir Putin, at this time headed by one of the most liberal members of his team, Igor Shuvalov, we are talking about a person who is useful both to the market and in publicly explaining the actions of the cabinet of ministers. The Prime Minister himself stood above the process, without being a member of this operational body and without heading it. Another thing is that the terms of reference of the anti-crisis commission, its composition, and most importantly, the real system of subordination in it are still unclear. For example, it is not clear whether the same Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, with whom the prime minister himself confused him at yesterday's government meeting, will carry out the orders of the head of the anti-crisis commission Igor Shuvalov.
The Supervisory Board of Vnesheconombank yesterday approved the bank's participation in the refinancing of a number of transactions of enterprises in the oil and gas complex, as well as VTB, for a total amount of about $2 billion. The total size of transactions approved by the supervisory board to refinance the external obligations of Russian issuers is $11.8 billion, VEB said in a statement . (It was previously reported that VTB has applied to refinance external loans in the amount of $950 million, but in accordance with the law, it will repay 25% of this amount on its own.) In addition to assistance with refinancing, VEB also provides subordinated loans to the banking sector. The first recipients of subordinated loans were Alfa Bank (RUB 10.2 billion), Nomos Bank (RUB 4.9 billion), and Khanty-Mansiysk Bank (RUB 2 billion). INTERFAX