Dmitry Medvedev is against state-owned corporations.
The state corporations (GK) that operate in a competitive environment must change their legal form. All the other GKs should eventually be closed and until that happens they should be under strict control. President Dmitry Medvedev has instructed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin until March 1 to prepare proposals for the reform of state corporations.
On Friday Dmitry Medvedev wrapped up the results of the audit of state corporations which were reported to him on November 10 by Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika and the head of the President's Control Directorate, Konstantin Chuichenko. The auditors presented facts and figures that show that government money is not used effectively and that some officials of GKs are derelict in their duties.
The head of state listened carefully to all the advice on how state corporations could be reformed. "Submit your proposals on transforming the state corporations operating in a competitive environment into different legal forms," Dmitry Medvedev instructed Vladimir Putin. The GKs that do not work in a competitive environment will eventually be dissolved. The government will decide when to do it. In the meantime they will be under close government scrutiny.
A representative of the state must sit on the supervisory board of GKs, Dmitry Medvedev said. From now on, the Audit Chamber will monitor how GKs spend government money, it will now be allowed to enter a GK unobstructed. GKs will be covered by the federal law on the placing of orders and services, something the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) had campaigned for furiously but unsuccessfully. Civil servants will be responsible for effective work of the GKs and fulfillment of the goals set before them. Clear-cut criteria of the performance of GKs will be developed. Medvedev gave the government until March 1 to submit all the relevant proposals.
The fate of the Housing and Utilities Reform Fund is clear. As the head of the Fund, Konstantin Tsitsyn, told RBC Daily, the Fund will be disbanded when it fulfills its mission by 2012.
Rosatom, the Deposit Insurance Agency and Olympstroi need not worry for several years at least, RBC Daily's source at the FAS believes. Because these state corporations are not operating in a competitive environment, they will not be converted into joint stock companies. Rosnano, Rostekhnologii and the Development Bank will change their legal status, a source at the FAS says. Most probably, they will be turned into joint stock companies as early as 2010.
The fate of Rosatom and the Deposit Insurance Agency is still unclear because of the "specific character of their activities," Presidential Aide Arkady Dvorkovich said in comments on the President's Address. In September, even before the results of the audit of state corporations were known, Dvorkovich was already saying: "State corporations should be essentially market-oriented, and then their legal form would not matter."
A spokesman for Rostekhnologii, Valery Kartatsev, told RBC Daily that "the legal form of a corporation is not a matter of principle. Some problems may arise only for our offices abroad which may lose some of the privileges that they enjoy owing to their current status (state institutions of Russia - RBC Daily)."
Inga Vorobyova