On his visit to the plant, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected the machinery department producing the equipment for the BN-800 nuclear reactor for the Beloyarsk NPP, and component parts for the repairs of the BN-600 reactor. Director Boris Vasilyev told Mr Putin that the plant has been increasing its production despite the current economic difficulties.

Vladimir Putin and Viktor Kress discussed the social and economic situation in the Tomsk Region.

"The main strategic goals of modernising higher education have already been determined. We must build a flexible educational system that should meet the demands of society in general and its members in particular. It is important to introduce modern programmes of education and methods of assessing its quality. It is this system that will give young specialists a chance to find a worthy place in the labour market, and will ensure permanent growth of the quality of labour by granting a wide range of services on professional retraining and upgrading of skills".

"As you know, today the world and this country are undergoing economic difficulties that also affect higher education. First of all, it is important to make sure that those students who pay for their education are able to do so. Another very important and urgent issue is employment."

Mr Ivanov said that the export of dual-purpose equipment grew by almost one-third last year and amounted to $6.568 billion.

Mr Zubkov said that “grain growing remains a priority area of agricultural production,” and that “grain has been and will always be” an invariably high demand product. Therefore, there is a need to consider increasing the areas sown to grain, and to raise the quality of seed grain.

"We will discuss proposed amendments to the Budget Code. We need to make certain adjustments to the Budget Code to be able to finance the budget deficit from the Reserve Fund. We’ll also need to establish a procedure for using these reserves. We’ll discuss and take into account the needs of Russia’s constituent regions, change the support schemes, give them more freedom in handling their municipal finances, and authorise regional governments to provide prompt support to municipal budgets".