By Nigina Beroyeva
Vladimir Putin had a busy day yesterday, what with the planned signing of a gas contract with Ukraine. The Government was preparing for the arrival of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, but although important agreements had been reached the night before, few people in Moscow believed the gas conflict was over. What if Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko changes his mind again?
One way or another, the natural gas crisis, which drew the world's attention away from the global financial crisis earlier this year, seemed to be drawing to an end, encouraging the Russian Government's Presidium to resume discussion of economic problems.
"Oil cost $41 per barrel last week," Putin said when opening the meeting. "Oil is one of our leading export commodities on which our macroeconomic policy, including budget expenses and revenues, largely depends. The 2009 budget, however, was drafted before the crisis, and the calculation of its macroeconomic parameters was based on the oil price of $95 per barrel and a global economic growth rate of 4%. However, global realities have changed, and we should correct our budget parameters accordingly."
The old scenario forecast inflation at 7%-8.5%, a strengthening of the rouble, and a 10% growth in people's incomes.
"It is true that we planned before the onset of the crisis," Economics Minister Elvira Nabiullina said. "Current forecasts differ greatly from one other. According to the latest data from the World Bank, global economic growth has fallen from 4% to 0.9%. We propose taking the worst-case scenario, which forecasts a negative 0.3% global economic growth, as the basis. It forecasts a decline of 2.6% in the United States and 2.2% in the euro zone. We propose basing our forecast on the oil price of $41 per barrel, although different forecasts set the oil price between $30 and $80 per barrel."
It appears that Russian economists have decided to be realistic this time, because oil consumption is falling and there are no grounds for expecting oil prices to grow. As a result, the new forecast sets the exchange rate of the dollar at 35.1 roubles and inflation at 13% or higher.
Next Putin gave the floor to Healthcare and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova, who reported on an increase in child allowances.
The childbirth bonus was increased to 9,592 roubles on January 1, and the monthly allowance for bringing up children until the age of 18 months was increased to 7,194 roubles (calculated on the basis of wage) for working mothers and to 1,798 roubles for non-working mothers for the first child, 3,597 roubles for a second and subsequent children.
The Healthcare and Social Development Ministry also intends to increase pensions for the public sector staff.