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.”
“We need to take effective steps to upgrade competition at the retail electricity market. Energy companies require stable, predictable conditions, steady and predictable demand and guarantees for the return of investments, which are quite considerable.”
“Currently we are creating all necessary conditions for the work of our companies, for developing new oil and gas provinces, for improving the sector's efficiency. These are financial incentives and the consistent development of transport infrastructure, including the pipeline network, which will doubtless create new conditions and new prospects for the sector.”
“Based on a system-wide approach, we began to create incentives for investment projects that will ensure the long-term growth of oil and gas production. Our goal is to create a flexible toolkit, including fiscal tools, to make all of the hydrocarbon production projects more attractive for investment. In this way, we will be able to strategically enhance Russian energy security and play a bigger role on the global energy markets.”
“A significant reserve means more field production and the sparing use of minerals, as well as the more active use and involvement of hard-to-recover oil reserves. As you well know, such projects need both serious investment and state-of-the-art technologies. And we need to create conditions that attract investment, so that beginning work on new sites and the exploration of technologically difficult fields are profitable and worthwhile endeavours for companies that allow them to recoup investment costs and earn economically justified profits.”
“Our country, you and I, have managed to prevent a repeat of the shocks of 1998. This, too, can certainly be called your achievement, to a considerable extent. This attests to the fact that the plan of anti-crisis measures drafted and advanced by the government had proved effective.”
“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.”
“We've dramatically changed the very procedure for considering investor applications. Many of the formalities have been simplified and excessive approval requirements have been removed. Thanks to the adoption of a whole number of amendments, foreign companies have now gained wider access to the food, medical and mining industries, as well as to the banking sector.”
“As a matter of fact, a new mechanism has been created and tested for attracting foreign investment and granting foreign companies access to operate in strategic sectors of the Russian economy. Since it was formed four years ago, the commission has considered more than 140 applications from foreign companies and investors. An overwhelming majority of those applications (94%) has been approved. Only in eight cases have the applications been turned down, and always for good reason. None of the rejections has been disputed or appealed against.”
“We may have different approaches to problems, but our common goal is to improve the quality of life in Russia, to make it more decent, comfortable and prosperous, to create conditions for resolving demographic problems so that we can have more children and more happy children, and to help people in trouble, people with special needs.”
“A great deal has been done in recent years to advance Russian-Chinese relations. We don’t have a single irritant in our relations, but we do have shared interests. We’ve managed to develop effective instruments for achieving our common goals, with the most important of these being higher living standards and socio-economic cooperation.”
“I think that, as with the energy market, we should consider introducing the principles of economically justified profit on investment capital. In this way we will be able to form transparent, stable and long-term rules of the game for the future and attract to the industry really big, so-called long-term investment, including money from pension and insurance funds, Russian and foreign financial institutions and resources of strategic investors.”
“Clearly, we must fundamentally improve our tariff policy on railway transport and switch to modern methods of regulation in this sphere. We need a predictable tariff formula that is understandable to all economic players, and it should last for five to ten years rather than one.”
“According to expert estimates, we will have to invest another five trillion roubles in infrastructure modernisation and development in the next decade. One of our priorities is to increase access to Eastern Siberia and the Far East and to develop approaches to our major sea ports. Thus, we must organise new routes as part of preparations for the 2014 Olympics and the World Cup in 2018. We will also expand our programme for high-speed passenger service.”
“Dozens of railway terminals have been repaired and high-speed service has opened between Moscow and St Petersburg, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, and St Petersburg and Helsinki. We have started implementing projects for intermodal shipments that make it possible to connect ground and air transport into a single transport system. We are finishing building the Kuznetsov Tunnel in the Far East, which will allow us to lift restrictions for shipping cargoes to the ports of Vanino and Sovetskaya Gavan; we are expanding approaches to the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk in the North-West and have built a railway to Nizhny Bestyakh. This will allow us to launch projects for the comprehensive exploration of the south of Yakutia, which is a very important region for the development of Eastern Siberia.”
“Therefore, we must proceed from the following basic task – today we must create advanced, powerful infrastructure capacity in railway transport and form a clear series of priority projects for the long-term perspective, and most important, we need to be fully clear on the funding.”
“We need to see the prospects, and in this respect it is no secret that strategic forecasting is an important component of the development strategy for our economy and for this country in general. This is not idle talk, nor is it guesswork. We must proceed based on expert evaluation of the development of the global economy and the Russian economy, and to take a close and professional look at a more distant perspective.”
“United Russia should progress towards a healthy but firm conservatism. As planned, it should become a centrist conservative force relying on all the positive achievements at the previous stage of our development, which values these achievements yet is pointed toward the future. If we manage to create a mechanism for internal party democracy and ensure cooperation with the new government at the proper level, we will be able to work together towards the goals we have set.”
“It is necessary to improve the viability and the political competitiveness of United Russia, if it wants to continue to fight for leadership, and I think that any party should be willing to do so. It needs to prove to citizens and voters that its proposals for the development of the country, the economy and the social sphere are the best for the country in the time period in question. United Russia has everything it needs to preserve this leadership.”
“The ruling United Russia party played a positive role during the global financial crisis. I am confident that if the government and the majority of the State Duma didn’t work in such a coordinated manner as they did in the past two or three years, then many more of our citizens would have felt the cold abyss into which Russia could have plunged. Thank God, it did not happen.”
“The new economy which we are creating should employ and help realise the vast potential of our people. This is the overall goal we are working for. I am confident that we will achieve it.”
“The economy has a huge social, human dimension. The main results of our efforts should be the increasing standards of living for Russian families, modern jobs, the implementation of creative business projects, liberties and the opportunity for millions of our people to start their own business.”
“We all know that the end of the talks is not the end of the road. In fact, it is the beginning of some difficult work within the WTO framework. We should make full use of the advantages of our access to new markets to promote Russian products, while at the same time minimising the risks which are hindering the work of our companies abroad.”
“We realise that winning the competition for direct investment and creating highly attractive conditions for business will help us be victorious in our struggle for the efficiency of the Russian economy and for a new quality of growth. This is precisely why our economic policy, our business climate, and our conditions for foreign investment inflows, the creation of new production lines and innovation should be truly competitive. <…> This means we shouldn’t just make our economic policies more effective, we should also constantly compare our moves and their results to what is happening in other countries. We should try to act faster and more decisively than our potential competitors do.”
“Global transformational processes go on as we speak, so when forming our economic policies, we should be mindful of the whole array of internal and external factors. We need to develop an effective and reliable long-term planning and forecasting system which would help us identify growth trends and lay out the steps to be taken in each of the priority areas, which include enhancing living standards, poverty reduction, creating millions of new modern jobs, economic modernisation, increasing the share of innovative industries and high-tech exports, as well as developing industrial and transport infrastructure.”
“Russia’s economy must have higher growth rates than the global GDP in the next decade. In addition to growth volumes, we need a new quality of economic growth, which I have mentioned on many occasions.”
“We must create the most favourable conditions we can for families with children. Everything is important here, from government support, to the solution of housing problems, to the development of preschool education and labour market benefits.”
“A portal launched on March 1 to get public opinion on the most important governmental draft laws. Citizens have the option to make their points and submit proposals. Essentially, that is the feedback mechanism that I mentioned: a project is evaluated not only by departments and not only by the people who had developed the draft law or by-law, but by the people who will live and work under these laws.”
“We need a modern model of governance based on state-of-the-art information technologies including crowdsourcing – a preliminary poll with a consecutive reaction to the results of the decisions that are being introduced.”
“We are entering a very important period of forming the 2013-2015 budget. The priorities that we will put into it will determine the quality of life of our people, as well as economic and social growth. As a matter of fact, the budget for the next three years will become the financial basis for the strategic programme that we proposed to our society and that was approved by millions.”
“We need to stay the course of drastic simplification of tax return preparation. In particular, we need to reduce the volume and complexity of the paperwork and the number of inputs. We also need to radically simplify the maintenance of tax records and bring tax calculations as close to accounting rules as possible.”
“I believe the performance of regional and local government agencies should be assessed using indices such as investment, tax revenue, and job creation. And decisions on the co-funding of regional development projects should be made based on that kind of assessment.”
“I propose forming a uniform regulation governing interactions between the participants of construction projects that are being implemented under regional housing programmes. Such a regulation should include a clear description of mutual undertakings and approval deadlines, so that there is a basic understanding of the time it takes to hook up a newly built house to utilities or for a bank to decide on issuing a construction loan and so on.”
“It’s imperative that we preclude the emergence of new barriers instead of the ones that we are about to remove. <…> In this regard, I suggest that a final, exhaustive list of construction-related administrative procedures should be adopted at the federal level.”
“We should make it possible for a large number of Russian households to solve their housing problems. There should be no administrative, bureaucratic or corruption barriers on the way to achieving this basic goal.”
“I hope that you share my perspective that current economic, administrative and other conditions in Russia provide a historic chance to turn around the situation in the housing sector. We have everything we need to do so today, including land, financial and administrative resources. Certainly, we need to initiate steps that will help us move forward quickly and carry out high-quality construction projects.”
“Creating a sustainable system of mass sport, building a sufficient number of sports facilities, making them accessible, raising the role of physical fitness in education are priorities for many nations, including Russia. Our goal is to involve no less than 40% of our citizens to regular sport activities and healthy lifestyles by the year 2020.”
“We share the opinion that the level of involvement of people in sports and physical activity reflects the quality of the state’s social policy, shows how responsible the state is towards its citizens and their health, and the fate of future generations.”
“Russia, which marked last November the 100th anniversary of its participation in the Olympic movement, understands the great significance of sport’s humanitarian mission and its enormous role in the life of individuals and in the life of nations. <…> This gives added weight to the Olympic movement’s mission to promote tolerance and friendship, the principles of fair play and mutual respect. It is a force that can make our world more humane, more just and more open.”
“We must work out a national strategy for the development of space centres for the long-term perspective. We should ensure a high return on the federal investment and effectively coordinate the construction and modernisation of space centres with other federal programmes and our plans for the relevant regions of the Russian Federation.”
“The first launch from the Vostochny Space Centre is due before 2015; its second stage will be completed by 2018, and the first manned flight should take place in 2018. <…> Russia must have a national space centre that meets the highest international standards. The majority of launches in the interests of various industries and within the framework of international cooperation will take off from this centre.”
“Only the existence of several space centres will guarantee Russia's complete independence in space exploration and will allow it to fully utilise the potentialities of space equipment. This is why we will continue paying so much attention to the modernisation of the existing space centres in Plesetsk and in Baikonur where, as I've already said, we will work with our Kazakh friends and colleagues.”
“In 2012, the federal budget allocated about 150 billion roubles for our space programmes, including more than 40.5 billion for space centres. The bulk of this money – about 30 billion roubles – will be spent on the Vostochny space centre.”
“The construction of the centre will serve as a catalyst for the development of the entire Far Eastern Federal District. It will help us fully utilise the industrial potential of the Far East and Eastern Siberia and attract highly skilled personnel to these regions.”
“Our long-term goal is to ensure that Russia is a leader on the global energy markets, to guarantee the growing domestic economic demand for hydrocarbons and to consolidate our positions on the world markets.”
“In 2012-2013 all servicemen should be given permanent residence. In the near term we will also completely solve the housing problems of Chernobyl veterans. The numbers of housing certificates to resettled people will increase several times over.”
“Very soon a system of early detection of drug addiction among schoolchildren will be introduced. We will subsequently have to consider introducing a similar practice among college and university students. Also, legislation should be amended to make punishment tougher for drug dealing and trafficking, for violations in the sale of alcohol, for getting minors involved in drug and alcohol use.”
“I am convinced that our WTO membership will provide a long-term powerful impulse for the dynamic and innovative growth of our economy. Its openness and increased competition will benefit the Russian people, and our manufacturers will receive the necessary impetus for further development. Our WTO membership is also about new markets and new prospects that we are not yet accustomed to seeing and assessing properly. Finally, membership in the WTO provides the possibility to defend our interests in a civil and legal manner.”
“The completion of negotiations on our accession to the WTO will create the conditions necessary for Russia to join another multilateral structure: the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. We are already conducting such work. Accessing the OECD would mean stamping a global mark of quality on our economy, both in general, and in terms of individual manufacturers.”
“Education and science should become top budgetary priorities. We are well aware that these two areas define the intellectual and technical strength of Russia and the quality of our human capital. Approaches to developing the long-term fundamental research programme will be improved. This programme should combine work performed at state-run academies of sciences, research centres and institutes of higher education. This programme should focus on those designs that will help Russia become a technically and scientifically advanced country.”
