MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vasily Kononenko.) Two days before the start of a new political season that traditionally coincides with the resumption of work by the State Duma, Vladimir Putin made public his ideas on how to improve life in Russia in the remaining three years of his presidency.
The president told top federal officials in the Grand Kremlin Palace how the government would spend the first 115 billion rubles, some of which had come from the Stabilization Fund, Russia's national piggy bank.
The tasks given by the president to all bodies of government may well be compared to the reforms of Pyotr Stolypin, or the undertakings of Adenauer and Ehrhard, which set off the German economic miracle. These are truly nationwide projects. State-of-the-art equipment will go to at least 10,000 municipal polyclinics, while the salaries of doctors and nurses will be increased threefold so that they could begin to feel like respectable members of society. In the educational sphere the government plans to upgrade schools and scientific centers, and establish two universities in the South and Siberian federal districts. During 2006-2008 the monthly salaries of scientists will average 30,000 rubles ($1,063). Such measures will stop the brain drain.
Mortgage programs will be introduced to reform agriculture. In general, mortgage secured by the state will become a universal instrument of ensuring a fast increase in housing construction. The duties on imported equipment that is not available in Russia have been cancelled to ensure a rapid advance of the Russian economy and science. Importantly, all these gigantic projects should not trigger off an imbalance in the economy, which has been the subject of heated debates by economists and politicians in the last few months. It appears that the money accumulated as a result of booming oil prices can be used sensibly: rather than being evenly distributed among different ministries it should be channeled into the ailing social structures. Incidentally, this is the path that was traversed by many nations of South East Asia, while the economy of post-war Germany started booming after investments had been channeled into the construction of housing, and into the road-and-transport infrastructure.
Not a single person of all those invited to the Kremlin found arguments for criticizing these plans. Even Communist leader Gennady Zuganov had to admit that "capital investment in human resources is always crucial." The Rodina leader, Dmitry Rogozin, spoke about a "transparent budget," which, in his opinion, allowed the government to make such vital social decisions. In effect, with these national projects the president deprives the opposition of its main slogan: "Reforms are worthless if the society cannot benefit from it."
In reality, the initiative of spending money from the Stabilization Fund and increasing the expectations of the budget's profits for 2006 was launched last summer by United Russia members Gryzlov, Morozov, and Volodin. At a top-level meeting between Duma and government officials on July 7 they suggested for the first time "a development budget," and quoted 324 billion rubles ($11.49 billion) as the required state investment in the economy. They asked Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to channel 115 billion rubles ($4.08 billion) out of this sum into the social sphere. Later on, these figures were analyzed by the Presidential Administration and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade for fear of upsetting the macro-economic indices of the Fundamental Law.
Judging by the warning issued by Vladimir Putin in the beginning of his speech on national projects "we can only spend as much as we make," inflation is unlikely to soar. A number of economists believe that the quoted figures of spending are less than 0.5% of the GDP. Working out a mechanism for carrying out these ambitious plans will not be an easy task. There are many threats - from lobbyism to corruption. In this context President Putin volunteered to personally supervise the work of the Council in charge of implementing these plans. To all intents and purposes, the president considers these projects to be his main mission for the remainder of his term, and wants them to crown his eight-year-long presidency with an impressive achievement - making Russia a prosperous country.
