VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
The government will review the approved projects requesting allocations from the Investment Fund and suspend the receipt of new requests. It will consider only the projects aimed at supporting crisis-affected sectors, notably engineering, metals production, and the production of construction materials. However, these requests will be considered "especially carefully."
Very soon the Government will approve a competition development programme for Russia. At a meeting of the Council on Competition and Entrepreneurship in the White House yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accepted proposals and requests from businessmen.
The global crisis and grain overproduction have made grain exports unprofitable. Despite this, Russia's agro-industrial sector plans to export 10 million tonnes of grain in 2008. At its meeting yesterday, the Government decided to compensate farms for their losses from the state budget at the expense of the taxpayers.
Yesterday the Cabinet met in full session to review the fulfilment of the federal budget in the first nine months of the year and the use of the Investment Fund. However, the ministers found time to discuss other details. A heated discussion developed on one of the vital issues of the day, powdered milk.
Yesterday, the Federation Council approved and President Medvedev signed into law a bill implementing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's tax initiatives - first and foremost, reducing the profit tax by 4%. The Ministry of Finance has promised the senators, worried by the fact that the emergency tax reduction is being carried out, among other things, at the expense of the prepared regional budgets, to compensate for the regions' losses. In order to do that and to balance the federal budget, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin is ready to spend up to 1 trillion roubles in 2009 from the Reserve Fund. Just a week ago, the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned half the sum needed for such support.
On November 26, 2008, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin convened, for the first time during his second term in office, a meeting of the government's Council on Competition and Entrepreneurship.
The Chairman of United Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, will hold a meeting with the heads of all his public reception offices in early December, according to Kommersant's information. It will recognize the best workers who handle citizens' problems and set the tasks for 2009 in relation to their work in the crisis period.
Russian oil producers, terrified by the dramatic price fall, are lobbying for another cut in oil export tax, with Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin taking their side.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected a section of the Russian-Finnish border and discussed ways to optimise the state border infrastructure at a meeting of the border control commission.
The much-touted purge of the ruling party has been put on hold due to the financial crisis, which allegedly makes it necessary for UR to close its ranks. Experts attribute it to the growing in-fighting among the elites for control of the party and the country's political future. Meanwhile, United Russia is under the watchful eye of its leader: the deputies will now have to give an account of what they did during the period allocated for trips to the regions.
