Festival of suburban blues

In 2017, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (PMEF) in all respects finally reached the development point that he had been striving for many years-among its regular participants there were almost no dissatisfied. Most of all, PMEF now resembles the Soviet Union on the eve of its decay: a huge mass of large state projects, the authors of which are too busy to hear each other, are too much connected by mutual obligations to solve something.

Luxury

After moving the site of the forum from LenExpo to the suburbs, to Shushars, endless lines of black Mercedes, waiting for planting and landing high -ranking guests, disappeared. The leaders of foreign companies, the main and most welcome guests of the PMEF, ceased to be amazed at continuous change in the schedules of meetings of their high-ranking Russian partners, who are always summoned to Putin in Strelna, then for a meeting in Moscow, then somewhere else. Despite the constant increase in prices for exhibition areas, in 2017, the stands of PMEF participants were bursting with demonstration luxury. Vnesheconombank (VEB) met guests in the lobby with a flying quadrocopter-motorcycle (it does not fly anywhere), KAMAZ-with an unmanned electro-automatic boat (he does not go anywhere), Rosneft-thousands of production photographs hanging from the ceiling (it is impossible to consider), “Uralkali”-a tropical garden: in Russia, in Russia, about few guesses - the official year of ecology.

The spirit of meaningless excitement, which used to be felt at the PMEF in every corner, finally disappeared and disappeared: although 10 thousand participants in the forum are still constantly going somewhere, now they do it slowly and accurately knowing where they are going. It evaporated from the forum and a continuous thirst for participation in open and closed parties. On the one hand, there are no oligarchs on PMEF - even those who previously attracted the attention of the public in this capacity, now solid leaders and on the forum appear only when necessary, the rest of the meetings are held either in the city, or in general, this is a good tone. He was given, in general, Vladimir Putin, who preferred to talk with guests not in Shushara, but in a residence in Strelna, - on the PMEF site, the president appeared for several hours.

On the other hand, the parties themselves did not disappear, except that they became calmer. Everyone and invitations are enough for everyone, and they are usually free - over many years of the forum, everyone already knows who to call and with whom to agree, negotiations about who and who will come to have fun, begins almost in January. If some poor fellow has not learned the rules of the game, then you can compensate for: the quick managers are clogging in places in restaurants where entertainment events are held, $ 3-4 thousand per table. And this, one might say, is fair - business ties cost money. At such prices, people tend to have fun solidly and calmly, slowly.

However, the money is unimportant. Since the most PMEF exhibitors are either state -owned, or dependent on the state budget, the question of the sources of well -being does not arise, and private structures have to be equal to the State Flagmans or not. However, the latter is not always possible for prestigious reasons and for purely commercial: for foreigners who have well learned the rules of the game, the forum in St. Petersburg is a place where the state officially certifies private transactions as a third party.

PMEF now resembles the Soviet Union on the eve of its decay: a huge mass of large state projects, the authors of which are too busy to hear each other and are too much connected to solve something

The bulk of the agreements on the PMEF-2017, however, as in the last years, are agreements or memorandums on cooperation and understanding: the Vladimir region with the Novgorod, and vice versa, ASI with Russian Railways with an open government, ministries and associations of ice cream manufacturers, the Japanese trade and industrial chamber with the Dagestan Union of Housing and Public Utilities. Most of these agreements, little is worth it, but fits into the statistics of "transactions imprisoned at the PMEF." However, there are a lot of real transactions to the PMEF-the preoccupied representatives of the American Chevron or the Japanese Itochu passing somewhere know why they flew to St. Petersburg, although their transactions, as a rule, are not too large and are rarely announced officially.

Against this background, there are already few, except for the participants, the official part of the PMEF-numerous panels, round tables, presentations, discussion platforms, television models and press conferences, that is, everything that should be the information content of the main economic forum of Russia. With him in 2017, everything is especially significant - the main thing that can be found out on the forum - "the decision is still being discussed and has not yet been made."

What to talk about when there is nothing to talk about

The fact that there will be no news on the forum in St. Petersburg, it became obvious a week before the opening of the PMEF, June 1. The main substantial issue for the summer-autumn of 2017 is the expectation of a future economic program for the presidential election. At the end of May, it turned out that it would not and would not be: Alexey Kudrin handed over the President of the Center for Strategic Development, the Business Ombudsman Boris Titov-the program “Stolypinsky Club”, representatives of the government, represented by the head of the Ministry of Economy, Maxim Oreshkin created a government version of the action plan for 2018–2025, it was not agreed by part of the government, and therefore is also officially ready. All documents, except for the little presentation of the “Stolypin Club”, are circulated in the corridors of the authorities under the heading “chipboard”; It is known that within two months Vladimir Putin intends to additionally discuss the ideas of reform. How and in what order is his business. True, the issue of taxes for 2018–2020 still needs to be solved quickly - without this, the head of the Ministry of Finance Anton Siluanov simply cannot flash a three -year budget. But the tax meeting in the Kremlin, at which it is supposed to solve (or not solve), increase VAT and reduce the rates of social services since 2019 (Maxim Oreshkin’s proposal) or slightly increase the budget deficit for 2018-2019 (proposal of Alexei Kudrin), will be about two weeks after the completion of the PMEF.

Taxes and future reforms are the main question that interests all potential investors. If there is no answer to this question, then everything else is also, in general, conditionally - it is impossible to build a plant of paints and varnishes in Lipetsk or invest in a car assembly in Khabarovsk, without information about the future of the tax and budget regime for at least three years in advance.

It may seem that these are technical subtleties - but in reality this is the main question. There are also political problems behind the tax regime and issues of structural reforms - it makes sense to entrust the new course to the new composition of the government, for the old course this is not necessary; and labor - the issue of retirement age and the future of the pension system - this is largely the issue of the cost and availability of labor for new projects in Russia; And financial - mainly budget funds in Russia are divided in advance, the usual price of the issue is 500-600 billion rubles. In the year of constantly redistributed money, and any reforms change the alignment of forces in the struggle for these $ 10 billion. Finally, this is the issue of information support - the new course requires expensive media support: on the forum, the stands of winding media holdings looked richer than even the stands of Gazprom and Sberbank.

Fulfound managers are in place in restaurants where entertainment events are held, $ 3-4 thousand per table. And this is fair - business ties cost money

And this is a worldview question. The main word on the PMEF-2017 is “digital”. From 2013 to 2016, the state sector in Russia was so carried away by the future sovereign Russia, which develops a weapon of victory in the global geopolitical game that has passed the main process in the global economy - the preparations for the transition of the “digital industry” that go with might and main. The seriousness of what is happening is indicated, for example, that the companies and the German government since 2016 will spend more than € 100 billion in four years on the preparation program for this revolution. This is not only unmanned vehicles - this is mainly the connection of all production capacities to a single information member, their robotization, digitalization in the same network of observation, control and service processes (including state), new principles for placing and managing production. The revolution, according to estimates, has already begun and last from 15 to 20 years. In the past three years, the Russian economy has been involved in it almost completely imitatingly: three years of economic recession, conquering Crimea and the information resistance of NATO, the EU and the United States have been spent not on that. The reforms will either return the country's economy to global rails, or after 7-8 years isolating Russia from the economies of the big world in the status of a supplier of raw materials and human resources-to “buy” new technologies, as before, it will be unlikely to be possible, since the buyer’s economy must correspond to these technologies. Automatic logistics systems are not applicable where, in addition to oil, there is nothing to transport to the border.

On the one hand, almost all reasonable people understood this - and there were many of them. On the other hand, they needed to hurry to sign an agreement on intentions between the Karelia Pension Fund and the Association of Practical Types of Shooting - there will be ministers and Swiss partners. The schedule of everyone is so dense that there is no time to think and has no time to solve. Not now. The future will come later, and it will be bright-the flying unmanned paper motorcycle named after the head of Sberbank German Gref will ever fly somewhere.

At the beginning of the last summer

In the absence of a certain general line, the projects and plans of individual parts of the state machine shown to the PMEF struck the imagination: everything looks like the information and communication system inside the state apparatus is completely paralyzed by a kind of computer virus that does not allow participants in the process not only to coordinate their actions, statements or plans, but also to notice that no one hears you. For example, the Ministry of Industry and Trade unexpectedly decides to advance to the masses for many years the already developed project for introducing “food cards” for the poorest segments of the population. It costs about 300 billion rubles. In the year of government, and the Ministry of Finance with bewilderment states that he does not see resources for this. This does not bother anyone. Nearby, the Central Bank is building a network of payment cards "Mir" for state employees, and it is not connected with "food cards". In the neighborhood of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it finishes new electronic passports - also cards, and also separate. The number of universal information systems and Big Data projects developed by departments is calculated by dozens and hundreds. By the 2020s, all these systems should communicate with each other through the new generation informs-5G. True, telecommunication companies openly say that there will be no 5G networks, since all the money will go to the execution of the Yarovaya Law on the storage of all data from all users. And it is impossible to store all the data passing according to 5G for the needs of the FSB.

The seriousness of what is happening is indicated, for example, that the companies and the German government since 2016 will spend more than € 100 billion in the training program for the digital industrial revolution in four years

Of course, historical analogies are always lame. But most of all, information chaos, with the appearance of full order and dimensionality, resembles the state of state power in 1989-1991. Recall that many old government officials still remember this time as very strange. The state apparatus of the USSR was then full of strength, neither the congresses of people's deputies, nor Boris Yeltsin, nor political reforms were completely afraid. He was busy with large -scale projects, jerks and breakthroughs were prepared. But somehow they were strangely preparing: in the last two years of the existence of the Soviet apparatus, he almost ceased to communicate inside himself: good plans, without even having time to start, were replaced by the best, new progressive officials-members of the CPSU immediately went to increase, did not manage to turn anything, the projects kaleidoscopically replaced each other. So far, finally, by the summer of 1991, everything simply did not stop by itself, and by August 1991, power simply lay on the floor when it was picked up by a new Russian leadership.

Of course, the story is not repeated twice-if everything goes the same, then everything will be completely different. But to find out how exactly it can be, it is pointless to PMEF - here everyone is too busy with what is considered real.

Photo: Twitter.com/tularegion71