Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, Mr Gordeyev. How have you been doing in your new position?

Alexei Gordeyev: Mr Putin, it is an interesting position in the context of the experience I had gained during my work at the Government's federal agencies, as well as contacts and knowledge of the region. I hope everything is going well. At any rate, there are positive trends in a number of sectors.

I have briefly reported to you on the regional socio-economic situation from Murom. We are well aware of our problems. Some negative trends should also be mentioned. At the same time, we have posted good results in terms of such main parameters as industrial production index, construction index and fixed capital investment. Incidentally, financial results posted in the past five months are slightly better than the nationwide average.

The agricultural production indices have grown by 9% to reach 109%. This is another positive trend. In the past five months, meat and milk production has soared by 30% and 15%, respectively, on the January-May 2008 period. This is a particularly impressive achievement. Although the situation remains complicated, it is under control.

You always ask Governors about the unemployment rate in their region. This is probably the most important issue. In April, we managed to get the situation stable. Although there were almost 33,000 jobless, their number has now dwindled to 32,500. As I have already said, we are successfully handling the problem, and the number of unemployed is declining.

Mr Putin, here is another interesting slide on wage issues. As you can see, regional wage arrears are slowly going down. Only three enterprises now account for 88% of wage arrears, all of them being strategic enterprises. We are focusing on them because we realise that the regional situation will improve if all these problems are solved there.

On the whole, our survey highlights three major problems, namely, the well-known global economic problems, extremely weak management, and absolute indifference and sometimes even greed of corporate owners. Consequently, we are now establishing special working groups to deal with such enterprises. We hope that specialised federal ministries will support us and will help to sort things out. In most cases, such issues can be overcome. This is what the situation looks like.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Gordeyev, you worked in the Government for many years, and you always did a good job. You have mentioned your contacts with your colleagues. Indeed, these extremely valuable relations are very important. I hope such contacts, this vitamin C, will positively influence your mood and the social well-being of the entire regional population.