Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's opening remarks:

Colleagues,

Today we will look into amendments to 2011 federal budget.

Overall, the Russian economy is growing. Consumer demand and investment activity are on the rise. Key economic sectors, including construction, machine building and agriculture, are quickly recovering. Prices for our traditional exports look good in general, as well. As we know, oil prices are down a little, but remain at acceptable levels.

All of these factors help generate substantial additional budget revenue, which is expected to exceed 800 billion roubles by the end of 2011. It is my pleasure to point out that two-thirds of this amount come from what is called the non-oil-and-gas sector. This means that the industries that are not directly related to the production of oil and gas are doing well and generating more and more budget revenues.

In addition, we managed to save an additional 131 billion roubles, primarily due to lower spending on government debt servicing. A low and safe government debt level is also indicative of the stability and reliability of the macroeconomic situation in Russia.

Thus, we now have significant additional funds at our disposal, and this is our plan for using them. First, the greater part of these funds, 719 billion roubles, will be used to cover the budget deficit in full, which means that we will not have to borrow 394 billion roubles on the loan domestic market. This means that this money, 394 billion roubles, will stay in the economy, which is very handy given global economic troubles and the fact that liquidity is declining somewhat.

Second, over additional 230 billion will be used to address the following objectives: about 43 billion roubles will go to social programmes, including additional 22.4 billion roubles for housing for WWII veterans. We will also reserve funds for the construction and acquisition of housing for service members, as well as paying pensions, benefits and severance packages to retired interior officers and paying social benefits to survivors of the Chernobyl disaster.

Next. About 148 billion roubles will be used to support the real sector of the economy, industry, agriculture and our development projects individually. We are talking about an additional allocation of 43.5 billion roubles to the agricultural complex, of which 40 billion roubles will be used to capitalise the Rosselkhozbank (which will create a beneficial environment for further lending to the agro-industrial sector) and 3.5 billion roubles for the acquisition of new farming equipment via the Rosagroleasing company. Almost 23 billion roubles will be transferred to Rusnano's authorised capital as a contribution. These funds are intended to be used for the implementation of pioneering and science-intensive projects. Over 17 billion roubles will be used to upgrade railway infrastructure. Over 11.7 billion roubles will be released to finance key – as I mentioned earlier – "individual" projects, such as the construction of heat power stations, primarily in garrisons and laboratory training facility at the Far Eastern Federal University, as in this case. I have visited it lately and discussed these issues with colleagues. We promised to help and support them, and we will do so.

There is another project that needs additional support from the state, mainly for the purposes of infrastructure development – the Gremyachinsk potassium salt deposit in the Volgograd Region.

We will release over 27 billion additional roubles in financial support to the regions, including 15 billion roubles to the Moscow city budget to upgrade the Vnukovo airport.

There is one more important point: we have found a way to allocate 22 billion roubles to replenish the resource base of the Housing and Utilities Reform
Fund. This will allow us to continue implementing the programme to relocate people living in dilapidated and unsafe houses and continue major repair work in apartment buildings that haven't been repaired for many decades now. This programme will be continued.