The prime minister addressed a conference of United Russia regional branches in the Volga Federal District.
The party is getting younger
A veritable fair featuring priority national projects bearing the United Russia logo has opened in Nizhni Novgorod, where representatives of regional authorities from the Volga Federal District convened on Tuesday. The governors did their best to win Vladimir Putin's approval, and some succeeded, like Perm Governor Oleg Chirkunov. "This is a good project, we'll support it," Putin told him.
Young women in knee-length skirts and young men in business suits walked around the fair's pavilions. I was surprised to see all of them take seats in the room where a traditional white armchair was prepared for Vladimir Putin (similar conferences have been held in the Siberian and the North Caucasus Federal Districts). The party of power really is getting younger!
The young ladies listened to their leader with bated breath.
"And I walked into the cabin..."
The prime minister spoke about strategic goals. He said the government is "especially interested in supporting 'smart' production facilities" and that industrial parks established in the Volga Federal District have created about 3,000 jobs.
Putin also spoke about AvtoVAZ, on whose success and failure the fortunes of the Samara Region rise and fall.
"AvtoVAZ employs tens of thousands of people - tens of thousands, as well as their families," he said. "The number goes up to one million people if you include the subcontractors. How can the government ignore this?" Putin said explaining the multibillion-rouble allocations to the carmaker.
He added that "new approaches are needed as well as new investments. But investments shouldn't be made just anywhere; they should be made in modernisation," he said. "Today AvtoVAZ is on the rise. It is profitable again."
Putin recalled that he had recently driven a Lada Kalina car on the Khabarovsk-Chita highway where he spoke to truck drivers, who boasted about their US-made trucks, which, they claimed, are far superior to Russian ones.
The prime minister told Sergei Kogogin he could actually stand up comfortably in the truck's cabin. The director general of AvtoVAZ responded that Russian trucks are also made according to European standards.
"A market is a market, and stop telling me about what you have on paper," Putin said. "I promised the truck drivers to covey their opinion to you, and I am now doing so publicly."
Putin said the car rebate programme would be continued next year. "It will amount to 14 billion roubles, including this year's carryover," he said.
"We have the money, but..."
In the next few years, the government will invest over 16 billion roubles to improve science and education centres in the Volga area, Putin said. He used this as a jumping off point to talk about the direction in which the national economy should proceed.
"I often hear people say: Why struggle with domestic manufacturers if we can import everything, from aircraft and vessels to motor vehicles to weaponry? Sure we can," he said. "Oil and natural gas could buy us everything we need. Indeed, in the modern global economy, we don't have to make everything on our own, down to the last screw. But I'm absolutely convinced that de-industrialisation would lead the country into a dead end. If we don't take the trouble to modernise and advance domestic industries, we'll inevitably increase our reliance on commodities."
The prime minister told the conference participants that the government would work to resolve one of Russia's worst problems, bad roads. He said some 14,000 kilometres of new roads would be built in the next five years and some 50 billion roubles would be allocated to repair roads in regional centres within two years.
(See pp. 8-9 to find out why it is more expensive to build roads in Russia than abroad.)
The government "will start implementing the programmes to modernise healthcare in Russia's regions at a total cost of 460 billion roubles" in 2011, he said.
Some 424 billion roubles will be allocated for the new federal housing programme in the next five years. "We need to build more housing in Russia, at least 100 million square metres a year," Putin said.
Seven billion roubles will be allocated from the federal budget for a new federal targeted programme to promote domestic and foreign tourism.
"Heifers are a more important asset..."
Speaking about agriculture, Putin recalled the damage done by last summer's drought and wildfires.
"The country lost 30 million tons of grain harvest in total. Nevertheless, I would like to emphasise that we have enough grain to meet domestic demand and beyond," Putin said.
He said one of the priority tasks was "to prevent profiteering in the food market" and to help farmers so that they do not have to slaughter all of their livestock.
The government will help farmers "buy equipment for improving the soil and subsidise bank interest on the loans they take to do so" Putin said, adding that 1 billion roubles would be allocated for this purpose.
Delegates took the floor to speak about their problems and achievements. Naum Babayev, head of the Russian Milk Company (Rusmoloko) and a leader in United Russia's Penza branch, said bulls were not in demand.
"I see you don't respect males," Putin replied.
"I do, but heifers are a more important asset in the dairy business," Babayev responded.
By Andrei Ryabtsev