Sergei Sobyanin told the meeting that over 400 billion roubles' worth of federal-budget allocations would be spent on streamlining the tax policy. He said the funding would be used to streamline profit tax, value-added tax and other tax categories. "Demand incentives and support for the industry is a pillar of the economy," Mr Sobyanin said.

He also said a list of strategic enterprises had been compiled, and that it included over 200 federal enterprises and over a thousand enterprises at regional level. The national budget stipulates about 300 billion roubles' worth of state guarantees for such enterprises. At the same time, Mr Sobyanin said "budgetary allocations will not be handed out just like that," and that "an entire range of problems plaguing such enterprises is not linked with the crisis."

Deputy Prime Minister Sobyanin focused on the problems of national defence-industry enterprises and said "we have preserved state defence contracts, allocated nearly 100 billion roubles as loan interest for the industry's enterprises. Moreover, 50 billion roubles have been allocated as additional investment for corporate statutory capital."

Mr Sobyanin also said the Government knew about the problems of constituent entities, and that the regions would get 36% more funding from the budget this year. "At the same time, we expect an adequate response from constituent entities which must streamline budgetary spending in order to fulfill all social commitments and to preserve and create jobs," Mr Sobyanin said.

Deputy Prime Minister Sobyanin said an 8% budget deficit would be posted in 2009. "We will stick to this maximum permissible ceiling," he said, stressing that "colossal allocations from the Reserved Fund" would be spent on financing the budget deficit.