The Prime Minister made this statement at a recent meeting in Kaluga.
As this paper reported, Vladimir Putin launched a total cycle assembly of cars at the Volkswagen plant just outside Kaluga last Tuesday. Later in the evening, he chaired a meeting on regional development (which started after this paper had already gone to press), where he made some very important and harsh statements.
"We are being too slow about reorganising the network of government and municipal social institutions. This accounts for the wasteful spending of regional and local budgets. Their contribution to the education and healthcare budgets is substantive: 147 billion roubles."
In effect, the Prime Minister said, a large chunk of that money has been spent on current needs. It was spent on the upkeep of institutions and not on what it had been intended for, such as providing incentives to foremost specialists or buying modern equipment.
Another problem Putin singled out was the fact that in 2008, spending on government and municipal administration had increased by 30% and, and in 2009 - by 4%.
"And this is in a time of crisis", the Prime Minister said, "when we are trying to save money in every area... You know full well that I will not accept the excuse that new tasks are popping up. This network needs to be restructured. Wasteful spending on the upkeep of government bodies and local government is unacceptably high; experts put it at 116 billion roubles, meaning that one in every three roubles from the budget has been wasted."
While summing it all up, Putin said:
"Today, the possibility of improving the situation by ‘mechanically pumping up' expenditure has been practically exhausted. And not only because we should think twice before increasing allocations. The main thing is that, without systemic transformations, a further increase in financing simply makes no sense. It doesn't get us anywhere. The delay in modernising the sectors that I've referred to may ultimately lead to a rollback..."
Alexander Gamov