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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a Government meeting

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Vladimir Putin's opening remarks:

Ladies and gentlemen,

Colleagues,

What have you done in the past week for the sake of the Russian people? Why do you keep silent? You mean, nothing? How come? What are you being paid for? You should work harder.

We have discussed on several occasions the effectiveness of regional authorities. We have also worked out criteria to assess the work of the Government, and now we should refer to them more often.

We should frequently reassess our anti-crisis policies, whether they work and help address our immediate concerns, and which of our actions produce tangible results for specific people.

Let us discuss a broad range of issues today. The first item on our agenda today is introducing a single state cadastral registration of immovable property. This is not a mere technicality or a vagrant speculation. It is an important issue that concerns nearly each and every citizen.

About 40 million plots of land in Russia are privately owned. Over 70% of Russian families own land, including 15 million subsistence farms, 19 million dachas and private vegetable gardens, and 7 million plots for private residential construction projects. The number of privatised flats, houses, garages and other properties exceeds tens of millions.

It is the Government's priority to establish a working system of ownership rights registration. The system is important because it will help people register property contracts without additional costs or bureaucratic delays, take out loans secured by their properties, enter into an inheritance, and have their ownership right guaranteed against infringement.

In 2006, we passed the so-called Dacha Amnesty Bill, and our hopes were pinned on it. It does work, although it fails to remove all the problems. The procedure for registering subsistence farms, vegetable gardens and garages was indeed simplified. As a result, during 2008 alone, 1.5 million properties were registered in accordance with the new procedure, a substantial increase from three or four years before.

In 2007, 680,000 properties were registered under the Dacha Amnesty rules, and 1.5 million in 2008, as I said.

This year, 45,000 to 50,000 properties get registered every week, suggesting their number will reach 2 million by the end of the year.

Furthermore, I would like to emphasize that most of the Dacha Amnesty rules are applicable for an indefinite term. The only limitation is on simplified registration of individual houses, but we should extend the term at least until 2015.

Therefore, people don't need to hurry as they could use the Dacha Amnesty procedure anytime they make a deal.

And yet, some problems remain. Not all the bureaucratic barriers have been removed, people still often have to go to many different offices to collect an excessive pile of documents, and they are charged a fee for each.

The most difficult problem is the parallel existence of two procedures, the ownership rights registration system and the property cadastre system.

In some cases the two systems hamper each other, while ideally they should be complementary.

The first step toward integration has already been made - I am referring to the setting up of a unified Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre, and Cartography.

A unified registration system, concept drafted by the Economic Development Ministry, provides for a step-by-step merger of the respective services in Russia's constituent regions, and building an integrated information system. As a result, people should be able to get all the help they need with their property registration at one office. It should also be quick, effective and cheap, I hope.

A merger of two services would also save federal funds, giving a tangible positive effect.

Next on our agenda is a discussion of the National Report on the Progress in Implementing the State Programme of Agricultural Development.

This is the first such report. It contains an analysis of the efficiency of our agrarian policy, and reviews the sector's development in 2008.

As required by law, the National Report will be forwarded to the State Duma and the Federation Council, and it will also be published in the media. We expect there to be lively and engaged discussion by MPs and the expert community. It should help us reveal some bottlenecks, adjust our plans with due account of developments both domestically and on world markets, and to identify the most effective measures of state support for agriculture.

As for our strategic plans, they remain unchanged. They include a significant increase in the production of essential kinds of produce - grain, milk, meat; a significant improvement in the quality of life in the countryside; the creation of new, efficient jobs; solving water and gas supply problems; and the construction of new housing, infrastructure and roads.

And finally, I will single out another point on our agenda today - the Guidelines for the Customs Tariffs Policy in 2010-2012. Our position in this respect is consistent and predictable. Russia is aiming for mutually beneficial integration into the world economy. We oppose the excessive use of protectionism. We do not reject this approach even within the context of the global economic crisis.

This is not a declaration. One example should suffice: in 2008, the average size of Russian import duties was 11.5%, while this year they decreased to approximately 10.7%. That is to say we are following a balanced policy which avoids extremes, such as, for example, the introduction of restrictive barriers on all imported goods, something that can be encountered in individual countries, or the reverse: the unilateral opening of a market accompanied by the absolute rejection of healthy support for domestic producers.

Incidentally, Ms Skrynnik (Elena Skrynnik, Agriculture Minister) and our Belarusian colleagues have, as far as I know, reached an agreement on milk imports. The import of powder milk will decrease, but there will be in increase in the import of products our internal market is short of, such as curd cheese and cheese. I request that this be fully implemented in practice. I hope that no superfluous measures will be taken regarding customs regulations or phyto-sanitary monitoring. We need to reach an agreement, and remove all obstacles.

We will also continue to carry out a balanced customs policy as regards customs tariffs. This must be done as carefully as possible and use the tools we have at our disposal to diversify the Russian economy, and establish modern, high-tech production.

And finally, as you know, the day before yesterday, as part of the troika framework, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus approved the draft unified customs tariff. Our partners have been accommodating on issues that are sensitive for us. As a matter of fact, the process has illustrated how to move forward to resolve such problems in the future. This has allowed our work on customs tariffs to be put into practice and the Customs Union will be operational on January 1, 2010.

At the same time, the decision was taken to negotiate our countries' accession to the WTO as a single customs territory, thus moving towards the closer integration of our economies, while at the same time integrating into the global economy on terms that benefit us. I think that this is a timely decision, especially in conditions of the global financial crisis when many producers of high-tech products are trying to "price-dump" them in the markets of third countries.

Membership in the WTO remains one of our strategic aims, but I repeat, as a single customs territory. We will continue to work with our European partners on their suggestions regarding a free trade zone. Inevitably we will do this in coordination with our partners in the Customs Union to ensure these processes are not contradictory.

In conclusion, I would like to say that in this regard, the main provisions of the customs tariffs policy must be clearly linked to the decision to establish a Customs Union. In relation to this, we need to be in permanent productive contact with our partners from Kazakhstan and Belarus.

Ms Nabiullina, please, take the floor.