Dmitry Butrin
On December 5, the White House intends to go into battle against the crisis in a regular way.
Before that, however, the Government will hold a series of meetings to gather information on how industries performed from September to November, and to sum up proposals for dealing with the economic crisis. The proposals will be collected by the Economic Development Ministry, analysed by the Economic Development and Finance Ministries, and coordinated by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.
Anti-crisis planning, involving 11 ministries, eight deputy prime ministers, and one state corporation, will last three weeks and end with a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The rehabilitation plan for the financial sector and separate branches, drawn up by the Government at meetings on October 29-30 and submitted on November 11, will, according to Mr Putin's instruction of November 17, be enlarged. The current lull in the Government's "anti-crisis" efforts, while Deputy Prime Ministers Igor Shuvalov, Igor Sechin and Alexei Kudrin refuse to promise any support to industrialists (as Mr Shuvalov did yesterday at a meeting with metals manufacturers), is due to the White House's intention to coordinate rescue measures first in the budget.
Kommersant has obtained Mr Putin's instruction of November 17 to ministries and the state corporation Rosatom, in which he tells them to hold a series of meetings with the appropriate bodies before December 1 to look into the economic situation. The ministries are refusing to comment, citing the confidential nature of the document. The instruction makes no mention of Vnesheconombank, which was to distribute $6 billion to replace foreign loans and on which, before November 2008, the White House based nearly all its anti-crisis moves outside the banking system handled by the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry.
According to the Government's own schedule, between November 17 and 24, the Economic Development Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the Energy Ministry, the Industry and Trade Ministry, the Transport Ministry, Rosatom, and six more ministries are to consider the September-October trends in their sectors. In addition, they are to estimate suppliers' risks, including among branches, possible changes in demand, federal programmes, and Investment Fund projects providing for private business co-financing (which in the changed conditions is just impossible), and to collect proposals for adjustment. All materials must arrive before November 24, while the Economic Development Ministry must analyse them and submit them to the Government and the Finance Ministry by November 26.
Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin and Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina will complete a second phase of calculations: before December 1, together with the Central Bank, they will analyse the situation from the point of view of finances and budget, and decide on plans to adjust the 2009-2011 budgets with an eye to the National Welfare Fund, the Pension Fund, receipts from the privatisation of state property, and possible "foreign and domestic loans". At the same time, all eight Deputy Prime Ministers are instructed to hold meetings before December 1 on the forecasts made during the first phase of the plan. First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov will coordinate all these steps.
Before the December 5 meeting, Igor Shuvalov, Alexei Kudrin, and chief of government staff Sergei Sobyanin, based on the results obtained, will hold "agreement meetings" to "balance out the stated requirements and the possibilities of financing" the economy. The final event will come on December 5: a meeting chaired by the Prime Minister.
Most likely, the White House will not advance new anti-crisis measures before that, while another rehabilitation package might not be announced until the end of next week or later. It might reflect an increase in budget-to-budget transfers early in 2009, investment fund reform (the White House will analyse it this Thursday), and new tax initiatives. Perhaps, it will then also assess the effectiveness of the Government's August-November anti-crisis steps already taken.
