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.”
“It is essential now that we consolidate the positive trends that have emerged in our agriculture and related industries in the last few years. Weather anomalies must not eradicate these trends and throw our agriculture progress back. This point mainly concerns such key sectors as livestock farming. I am convinced that we can make a breakthrough in increasing milk yields and in the cattle population similar to the progress in poultry and pork production. I want to remind you that poultry meat production increased 77-78% and pork 39% during the previous years. Any industry would take pride in such achievements, just as any country's agricultural sector would.”
“We will prolong the tariff reduction to July 1, 2011 and spread it from grain to soy and soybean meal from the (Russian) Far East. First, we will thus support the regions that must buy grain, including drought-hit areas. Second, reduced transport costs will, I hope, have a positive impact on food prices or at least help curb an increase. This is certainly essential.”
“The harvest fully satisfies the country's demand in grain considering carryover stocks and intervention inventory reserves. We have enough food and fodder grain. Still, we need to suspend grain exports for the time being because the stability of our domestic food market and livestock fodder should be our top priority.”
“As you know, the GDP will be 50.4 trillion roubles and the level of inflation is expected to be 6.5%. We think the budget deficit will be about 3.6% next year. Budget revenues will amount to 8.8 trillion roubles and expenses to 10.7 trillion roubles. We would really like to stay within these parameters and avoid increasing the budget deficit. It is a very important indicator that points to the stability of our economy. In this respect, we stand out from many of the so-called developed market economies of the world. There is no doubt that this is a self-made competitive advantage for us.”
“As things really are, Europe does not consume many genetically modified products or commodities that violate sanitary standards. That was why imports from certain countries were suspended - particularly chicken from the United States. I would like to remind you that we imported close on 1.5 million tonnes of chicken from the United States recently, against roughly 300,000 tonnes this year. I think we will do without these imports next year and later, especially because our sanitary inspectors often disapprove of the production techniques, transportation and storage of these foodstuffs. I also want to remind you that the production of chicken in Russia has increased by more than 70% these last years, by 79% if I am not mistaken, and the production of pork by 39%. This is sizeable progress for any economy and any agriculture. This is why the budgets for next year, 2011, and for the years to follow give prominence to the development of agriculture.”
“As for education, here I would like to emphasise that we will allocate for the first time (as we did not do in many previous years) significant funding to the Russian Academy of Science for attracting young scientists. We will allocate wage-rates and some money especially for this purpose. We allocated another two billion roubles for the purchase of new laboratory equipment. And we'll discuss other costs in more detail now.”
“We hope that economic growth will help to balance the country's budget. Extra budget revenues should come from qualitative economic development and not from oil fees or the demand for natural resources. So we have made a conservative forecast for oil prices. The current cost for oil is $75 per barrel, according to the draft budget for 2011. Of course, the decisions we made in the tax sector should increase budget revenues as well. I mean the increase of mineral extraction taxes, indexing excise taxes, and changing payment rates in the Pension Fund, Social Fund and the Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund.”
“I have always supported the programmes aimed at reducing the negative influence of human activity on climate and the environment. I will continue to support, together with the Russian government and other authorities, every effort to protect the environment. But still, our work should be based on a realistic view of the situation, and we should rely on expert opinion. We have been paying so much attention to supporting the experts who are working in this sphere precisely so we can determine Russia's practical policy that will be based on facts and objective research data, rather than on newspaper articles, however much we may respect them.”
“The Russian car market is potentially the largest in Europe. In addition, it has good prospects for exporting products to neighbouring countries. This is why we need large production facilities, not just mid-sized. This is what we need to create an efficient network of supplier plants and to pursue our own engineering solutions. Obviously, one of these manufacturers is our traditional manufacturer, AvtoVAZ, which is capable of producing up to 700,000 cars a year and is planning to form an alliance with the Renault-Nissan corporation, which is already a shareholder in AvtoVAZ.”
