Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Let’s look at last year’s results and your plans for 2011.

Viktor Kress: On the whole, the region’s economy grew by 6.1% compared to 2009 in physical terms and by 21% in money terms. This means that we exceeded the target figure for profits and had a budget surplus. We exceeded the plan in the energy sector, that is, hydrocarbons production, by 4.2%, and in the production of other mineral resources by 33%, due to nascent growth on the construction market. Growth in timber processing and woodworking was 23.6%.

This is very important to us because it is one of the industries where we are still lagging behind the Soviet era, when we produced 7 to 8 million cubic metres of timber. The current figure is only slightly more than 3 million. However, the degree of processing has increased considerably.

We have had a positive demographic ratio for the past years: the birth rate was 13,600, or 500 people more than the death rate, which was 13,100 last year. The migration rate is 5,000, which is also positive. People are coming to live and work in Siberia, and the region’s population has been growing in the past few years.

Registered unemployment amounted to 4% during the crisis year of 2009. The figure as of January 1, 2011, was 2.4%.

Vladimir Putin: Does this mean you have returned to the pre-crisis level?

Viktor Kress: Yes, it does. The employment situation is even slightly better than before the crisis.

As for agriculture, last summer’s drought has not affected us. Meat production in the region has grown by 6.5%, like the year before. We mostly produce poultry meat and pork: we are doing much better in this industry than during the richest years in the Soviet period, producing more meat and supplying it to other regions, primarily in Siberia and northern Russia.

We are encouraging the growth of meat livestock breeding.

Milk production has grown 0.2%. The situation in egg production has been unsteady for the second year in a row due to a change of owners, but we hope to settle the problem this year.

As for our plans for 2011, we have the following objectives. We have created the conditions for increasing oil and gas production, mostly by encouraging small companies. We have been steadily working towards this goal.

A few years ago, Tomskneft accounted for 98% to 99% of oil production in the region, but its share has since decreased to 65%. The company has reached an oil production plateau, but we can increase production by encouraging small companies, which is what we will be doing.

Vladimir Putin: How are you doing in education and healthcare? How much do you plan to spend on their modernisation?

Viktor Kress: A total of 7 billion roubles, out of which we will allocate 680 million. The rest will come from the federal budget and the Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund.

Vladimir Putin: Seven billion roubles?

Viktor Kress: Yes, 7 billion for two years. We have detailed plans. We have proposed several interesting initiatives…

Vladimir Putin: How much did you spend on healthcare on average in the past years?

Viktor Kress: Aggregate spending [on healthcare], including from the federal budget, amounted to 17–18 billion roubles a year.

Vladimir Putin: A year?

Viktor Kress: Yes, a year. The current figure is 3.5 billion, which is 15%, no, nearly 20% more. This is considerable assistance, which we plan to use to seriously improve our regional healthcare system. The programme of national projects helped us improve healthcare standards in the cities, especially in large district centres. But the situation in small towns is more complicated, just like in other [Russian] regions.

Vladimir Putin: Don’t forget to work on healthcare standards in rural areas.

Viktor Kress: No, we will certainly not overlook this.

Vladimir Putin: What about education?

Viktor Kress: Education is one of our priorities, which is why the situation with higher education is good [in the region] compared to the average across Russia. We believe that we rank alongside Moscow and St Petersburg in this respect.

Vladimir Putin: Why don’t you build student dormitories?

Viktor Kress: We do, although we should build more. We are aware of certain drawbacks in this sphere. We have started to lag behind, and unless we pay more attention to general school education now… We look good compared to other Siberian regions, but we rank 20th to 30th for Russia as a whole, and sometimes find ourselves in the lower 50% of the regions. This is not good at all, which is why I have held several meetings late last year and this year. We are getting down to business in the sphere of general school education. Of course, we will need to invest funds in it.