Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: How are things going, Mr Men? What results did you achieve over the first half of the year?

Mikhail Men: Here’s my report, Mr Putin. The start of the year was not easy for us. As you know, textile manufacturing is our basic industry. From last October to February of this year, the price of cotton more than tripled on global markets – from $1,800 to $6,000. But in the second quarter, our enterprises were able to level out, and, later on, the price dropped slightly to $5,200. Now we have fully recovered the industrial growth rates that we had last year. Our biggest headache was paying public sector employees on time. I’m pleased to report to you that the Ivanovo Region has now cleared these debts. 

Vladimir Putin: You are talking about the public sector, but what about the economy in general?

Mikhail Men: We don’t have any salary debts – either in machine building or the textile industry. Ivanovo is the only region in Central Russia without any such debts. I’d like to thank the Prosecutor General’s Office for their help – we worked together and achieved this result. We are still having problems with the sources of raw materials, but we are now conducting a feasibility report on an oil refinery in line with your instructions. This will not completely replace cotton-based textiles, but it will increase the range of products. We’ll be ready to present the report at our industrial forum in September.

Vladimir Putin: What about investment projects? Which are the most interesting in your opinion?

Mikhail Men: The most interesting… Before the end of this year, we’ll complete the construction of an electrometallurgical plant to produce 100,000 tonnes of fittings from scrap metal. We hope to meet the demand for this product not only in our region but also in the neighbouring Kostroma Region and probably even the Vladimir Region because there is a lot of scrap metal now that many companies are re-equipping. I think this business has good prospects.

We have the available energy capacity, and we’ve invited power engineers.

We also have a small but interesting project planned under which we have started assembling medium-sized tractors from foreign spare parts. 

Vladimir Putin: Have you made any decisions on schools and education? Have you signed the agreement with the ministry?

Mikhail Men: Yes, we will pay teachers 15,000 roubles by the end of the year, compared with our average regional salary of 13,500 roubles. So they will receive a bit more than average pay. Of course, this is still not a big salary, but our region is complicated.

Vladimir Putin: A bit more.

Mikhail Men: A bit more, just as you required.

Vladimir Putin: And what about healthcare modernisation?

Mikhail Men: We have held contract bids on 21 of 22 facilities and are now working on repairs. Doctors receive an average salary of 17,900 roubles – that is the average for doctors, not for clinics – and we’ll increase it to 19,000 roubles by the end of this year. Regrettably, paramedical personnel will receive less, but we are trying to bring their salaries up to 10,000 roubles. Doctors come first.