Kommersant: "Paperwork at the White house to double"
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has approved a law-making plan for 2009
The Government's law-making plan for 2009, which was last discussed in mid-November, has been approved. The number of bills expected to be drafted this year has been doubled, a tall order in a time of the crisis. However, some of the controversial documents, including the Law On Trade, will not be adopted in 2009.
On Friday, the White House published the Government's law-making schedule for 2009. The document was discussed at an inner cabinet meeting on November 17, 2008 (see the November 18, 2008 issue of Kommersant), and was sent back "for substantive revision", and Putin eventually signed the resolution on December 31, 2008. In the intervening period, the plan had doubled, increasing from 37 bills to 67 bills.
The paperwork has doubled because anti-crisis measures discussed by the Government in November and December of last year were included in the plan. For the Government, such growth is a near disaster: one-third of the bills are marked "concept and details not formulated". Unnamed White House experts who commented on the plan said the plan was one-third unfeasible, as the bills marked thus may fail to clear the early agreement phase. A bill usually takes a year to draft if starting from scratch, the exception being a budget bill and annual acts that go with it. Another exception might be drafts prepared by the Health Ministry: its head, Tatyana Golikova, was the best lobbyist for her Ministry in 2008. Still, even she will have her work cut out for her in pushing for health and pension reforms in the midst of the financial crisis. Ms Golikova is expected to put her package before the Government between May and August.
Prior to that, in the opening months of the year, the White House plans to focus on anti-crisis moves, which are no longer challenged by the ministries. They concern bills to make the banking system and financial markets more stable and liquid and offer some tax breaks. It is planned, for example, "to amend legislative acts aimed at encouraging deeper conversion of crude hydrocarbons". Inasmuch as the key decisions were taken at the end of 2008, when Mr Putin ran the economy "by manual control", and responsibility for the drafting is mainly vested with the Finance Ministry and the Federal Financial Markets Service, the White House believes that the amount of agreement needed will be minimal. Only the Economy Ministry can prove to be a weak link. As early as February, Elvira Nabiullina's Ministry is to submit amendments to the Laws On State Purchases and On the Protection of Competition, work on which began at the end of 2008.
The most controversial bills have been pushed back to the end of 2009. In November, the Government will attempt "to establish an international financial centre and turn the rouble into a regional reserve currency". The plan does not say whether or not the Central Bank will have enough reserves left by that time, but the bill On the National Payments System has been included. The less acceptable bills that have not been agreed on for years have been dropped. The bill On Trade, for example, which has been in the works since 2006 first at the Ministry for Economic Development and then at the Industry and Trade Ministry, has not made it to the list despite President Dmitry Medvedev's November 2008 directive to complete the work "in a month's time". On Friday, the Industry and Trade Ministry announced that "the bill is now being reconciled with the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Justice".
Mr Putin intends to put all drafts on the fast track by setting a new deadline, announced by the White House last week. The Prime Minister stripped the Ministries of their right to extend the agreement period beyond 30 days (see the December 15, 2008 issue of Kommersant), but the effectiveness of the new rule can be judged only when the 2009 schedule is fulfilled. According to staff specialists, previous plans were never carried out by more than 50%.
Pyotr Netreba
