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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired the Government meeting

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Vladimir Putin's introductory remarks: 

Good afternoon,

The main item on our agenda is the introduction of amendments to the Budget Code.

The current Budget Code has imposed rigid limitations on the use of oil and gas revenues and the amount of budget deficit. These norms were useful to us in the past. They allowed us to save eight trillion roubles in reserves. A balanced budget policy had guaranteed macroeconomic stability, and allowed us to fully resolve the national debt problem. Let me remind you that on January 1, 2000, our debt amounted to $150 billion.

At the same time, norms of budget legislation should correspond to the current economic situation, and this is why we have to amend them accordingly.

The amendments proposed by the Ministry of Finance serve to regulate the use of the Reserve Fund to cover the budget deficit that we will have to face over the course of the next few years.

We have made a calculated decision to use the available reserves on a large scale, despite a drop in budget revenues, so as to fully adhere to the Government's social commitments and to fund anti-crisis measures.

As we have said on more than one occasion, we will not reduce the budget's expenses in 2009. On the contrary, they will be slightly increased even further, because we will have to spend money on anti-crisis measures.

In addition, the draft grants broader rights to the regional authorities for supporting municipalities.

Today, support for the regional and local budgets is acquiring special significance, and we shall discuss this in detail at a regular meeting of the Commission on Regional Development in the next few days.

I'd like to ask the deputies of the State Duma to adopt amendments to the Budget Code at one of their next meetings as the Government is planning to submit to parliament a draft of the adjusted budget for this year before the end of March. We'll be able to do this only if the relevant amendments are made to the Budget Code.

This is the first issue that I wanted to draw your attention to. We have several items on the agenda but there is one of particular importance. Today, Mr Medvedev chaired a meeting of the Anti-Corruption Council. A detailed analysis of draft legal norms, which would make it possible to identify at the early stages loopholes used by dishonest officials, is designed to become a major element of our fight against corruption.

Our goal is to make sure that provisions of laws, delegated legislation and regulations should rule out any ambiguity or free interpretation, and should impose clear and transparent administrative procedures.

Needless to say, it is not enough to be guided only by assessments of experts from the state apparatus in analysing legislation for corruption-generating loopholes. Independent experts and representatives of civil society, as well as businessmen and scientists, should also be involved in this work.

I have signed a resolution on mandatory anti-corruption expertise of draft legal acts, which are being developed by the federal executive bodies.

At this point, having drafted a document, all departments will have to post it on their respective websites in order to receive opinions from independent experts.

All their remarks or amendments should receive a substantiated response, on why this or another proposal made by them should be accepted or rejected.

Accordingly, lawmaking in our departments will be as transparent and open as possible.

Let's get down to business.