Pyotr Netreba
Context
On December 5, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a "meeting on economic issues". Like all government meetings in recent days, it began at 6 p.m. and lasted until late at night. The Prime Minister announced preparations for the meeting on November 17. He instructed the deputy prime ministers to hold "coordination conferences" by December 5 in order "to balance bailout applications and possibilities of financing the economy" (see the Kommersant business daily of November 25).
When opening the meeting, Mr Putin emphasized that "in adopting the anti-crisis measures, we are thinking, primarily, about the people, not only about the economy as a whole".
Mr Putin outlined several themes for discussion in his opening address. According to him, "we must optimise the federal programmes and the programmes of state-run companies and infrastructure monopolies." He spoke about the need "to meet our international commitments without fail and implement the tasks of strengthening Russia's defences and security." "No doubt, it is also necessary to implement major investment projects, without which it will be difficult to develop the national economy in the future," Mr Putin added.
In regards to other areas, the Prime Minister suggested that "our resources be reassessed, and decisions on the optimisation of expenditures adopted, however difficult but indispensable." Another challenge set is "to slow down tariff growth and to simultaneously find optimal ways of supporting major companies' investment programmes."
It was expected that the Government would make its anti-crisis plan public on December 5 or 6. However, during a break in the Friday meeting, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the discussion would continue and that new measures would include "flexible natural monopolies' tariffs". As a result, the only decision made public after the meeting was on a set of measures to support the mortgage lending market.