VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
“Support from Russian citizens has always helped us, and I’m confident that the government’s future line-up will rely on the people. We must never forget about the needs of ordinary people. We must always remember how government-level decisions influence the lives of all ordinary Russian citizens.”
“Prices and tariffs are growing too, but when I said pensions would grow 12% next year, I meant growth minus inflation. Of course, our pensions are not sufficient, they are small, but they are still growing faster than inflation. We will try to keep up the pace.”
“Therefore, we will take additional measures next year to raise pensions. They will be raised three times - the basic pension twice and the non-funded pension once. If inflation grows too fast, we will increase the non-funded pension twice. On the whole, we plan to raise pensions by approximately 34% next year.”
“I believe that the use of maternity capital in the amounts planned to begin on January 1, 2010 may be moved to early 2009 in view of the financial problems in the world and in this country, so as to allow the families and mothers to use this money to pay off their mortgages.”
“I believe people should react accordingly because, under current legislation, the mayors of municipal entities, including such cities as Nizhny Novgorod, are elected through universal suffrage by secret ballot. Such elections involve the populations of their territories. Municipal leaders would feel the people's reaction during subsequent elections, unless they respond to their concerns.”
“We admitted a number of European companies - Finnish, Italian and German - to our energy sector; they acquired the biggest blocks of shares with our power companies, invested literally billions of dollars and euros. We invite such investments. We admitted them to participate in the development of hydrocarbons - both oil and gas.”
“I have to do justice to our European partners. For their part, they ventured the construction of new routes for our energy resource supplies to Europe. An excellent example is the constructing of the North Stream gas pipeline and our plans for the South Stream, as well as some other projects. Europeans have also admitted us to their energy transport system, namely the trunk pipeline. These are very good examples of integration in a crucial economic sphere: energy.”
“When oil prices were high, we took most of oil companies' windfall profits away from them and into the budget - through export and customs duties and taxes, as much as 80% and sometimes even 90%. It was thanks to these revenues that we formed most of the country's gold and hard currency reserves, which today, as I said earlier, are the third largest in the world - $450 billion. They are our "safety cushion" and allow us to make things easier during the crisis for millions of people.”
“What is particularly important for us is the results of our efforts in the social sphere. The increase in take-home wages will be approximately 12.6% and pensions slightly more than 12% - 25% in nominal figures. Industrial production growth will be nearly 5% (4.8%).”
“We have problems with inflation. The target figure was slightly above 12%, but annual inflation is likely to be 13%, because of the global crisis and because the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry had to inject a huge amount of liquidity into the economy.”
