Minutes of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Mr Kozak, let’s discuss regional development. Some regions are still summing up the results of their work in 2010, while the situation in many others is more or less clear. This also applies to the federal districts. Please.

Dmitry Kozak: Initial efforts to draft a long-term strategy for the social and economic development of the federal districts’ macro-regions became an important element of the Government’s regional policy last year. 

In 2010, we approved the development strategies for four federal districts under a 2010-2011 timeframe. What’s important is that they were not merely approved by the Government behind the scenes with the usual bureaucratic procedures, but were the subject of broad discussions involving political movements, parties, local governments and the business community. As a result of this, the Government decided to approve the strategies of these four federal districts. We are currently pursuing this by charting plans for their implementation. More importantly, specific decisions on priority investment projects have been adopted, which are to be realized within the first three years.

As a result of this, 107 priority investment projects have been selected for three federal districts, including Russia’s Far East, Siberia and the Volga Federal District. These investment projects have been coordinated with the business community and are covered by agreements between the government and business. These projects will make up one trillion roubles’ worth of investment in these three federal districts alone, hence extra-budgetary sources and private business will provide 83% of the investment.

The implementation of these projects which have already been selected and approved will make it possible to boost GDP growth in the three federal districts by 6% in three years, to expand industrial production volume by over 50% and to create about 200,000 jobs. Thus territorial investment will expand by 100-150%. Per your instruction, various government commissions oversee these priority investment projects.

The Government Commission on Investment Projects of National Importance is establishing eight sub-commissions which will comprise the regional leaders and project managers from the federal executive agencies. This is being done to complete this work on time. Many complicated projects require cooperation between various state authorities, as well as with the business community. New commissions made up of regional representatives are expected to follow through on this work.

Vladimir Putin: Investment Fund allocations provide the main impetus. What about cooperation between federal and regional agencies?

Dmitry Kozak: As far as the Investment Fund is concerned, many of these projects are financed as regional projects. As a rule, there are no problems here. Regional projects can be implemented far more efficiently and more quickly. Although they get less funding, any issues are effectively resolved at the local level. These projects are more effective than the federally-managed projects financed by the Investment Fund. There are 15 such major projects managed from the federal centres and they face various problems. Although these problems are also being solved, this objective is being accomplished more quickly at regional level.

Vladimir Putin: Good.