Moskovsky Komsomolets (Moscow): “Government to maintain social guarantees”
Putin sums up anti-crisis measures.
Maintaining financial and economic stability is the government's main task and achievement. This conclusion can be drawn from United Russia leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's address at the State Duma on Tuesday. Furthermore, the social component remains the government's major priority.
The government's 2009 anti-crisis measures were unprecedented, Putin said. However, no budget sequestration as such was carried out, he added.
"There was no sequestration," the prime minister said. "Sequestration is a uniform, all-out cut of the budget expenditures. But this was something we didn't do. We chose a different path, and I believe we did the right thing. In essence, we managed to maintain the original budget amount, reallocating it towards measures to support the country's social and economic stability."
"We used our reserves to finance the budget deficit," Putin stressed. "We directed the budget resources towards the most urgent and critical problems. Fifty percent of the budget was allocated to pay salaries, pensions, social benefits, and cover expenditures for education, health care, and housing." These resources amounted to nearly five trillion roubles, which exceeds the 2008 spending by 1 trillion roubles, he said.
As a result, the government managed to increase personal incomes and prevent mass unemployment in 2009 despite the economic downturn, Putin said.
"On average, personal incomes grew by 2.3% in 2009 compared to the previous year," Putin said. The income growth mostly reflected the increased salaries of state employees and pensions, "as opposed to oligarchs, who became significantly poorer during the same period," he added.
Putin noted that the government managed to maintain most social benefits, implement targeted public support measures, and help people who lost their jobs or had reduced incomes.
The members of United Russia immediately commented on their leader's speech and outlined their future objectives.
"This was a frank discussion," said Vyacheslav Volodin, the secretary at the United Russia General Council's Presidium. "The prime minister spoke about the government's activities in 2009 and shared its plans for 2010 and 2011. Due to the economic downturn in 2009, the funds originally intended for a number of targeted programmes were reallocated towards critically important areas for the public. Today, the government intends to return to implementing these programmes in various fields."
United Russia clearly realises the huge responsibility it has as the majority party and is prepared to continue working hard.
"Our party was and remains the main political force in the country, and we fully realise our responsibility to voters in terms of the quality of the programmes implemented in Russia," he added. "Our group will provide all the necessary legislative support to ensure that the anti-crisis measures, as well as the strategic programmes, are successfully implemented."
Meanwhile, Boris Gryzlov, the chairman of the United Russia Supreme Council, said: "I find it extremely important that the government's anti-crisis measures take due account of the Strategy-2020. The strategic tasks formulated before the economic downturn have not been abandoned. There is no doubt that the crisis has considerably complicated the situation. But what is also without question is that nothing has been lost."
Viktor Sedelnikov
