Dmitry Kozak's opening address:

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today we are holding a videoconference to discuss the regulations on rents and fees for housing and utilities services. As you know, this problem has become an acute political issue, for which individual local self-government bodies are mainly to blame, as well as regional authorities for their lack of oversight.

Let us start with what would seem to be entirely obvious. Housing and utilities policy has enormous social implications, and regulating this sector demands the greatest possible circumspection. Every measure must be well grounded and thoroughly studied from both economic and social perspective. This is, always has been and always will be not simply an economic issue but a socio-economic one as well.

Federal authorities are continually improving rent and fee regulations, and regional authorities have received similar powers this year. The national government has devolved the responsibility of limiting increases in rents and fees to the regional authorities, as they are closer to the population and housing and utilities companies, and so their decisions are better balanced between private interests and the interests of the industry.

The government has set the basic affordability criteria for utilities fees, made the utilities sector more transparent and established standards for information release by utilities companies. These standards require the utilities companies to disclose and publish all relevant information by this April. This information must be available to the public and for analysis by regional authorities and federal executives.

As you know, the Federal Tariff Service has recently been authorised to monitor housing and utilities tariffs. We should approve information disclosure standards for companies as quickly as possible, which is one of the reasons we have convened the present meeting. Audits of the information that has reached the federal level reveal blatant abuse by these companies as they inflate prices of their maintenance services in violation of the law and without holding tenant meetings.

We must once again look closely at the municipal entities where tariffs are increasing the most quickly. As I have said, there are not many such entities. On the whole, the situation is normal, reasonable and understandable: tariffs are not growing faster than incomes. Persons with utilities fees that are higher than 22% of their income are entitled to subsidies nationwide. However, certain municipal entities have established tariffs twice or even three times above the regional ceiling.

I call on all regional governors to carry out an exhaustive audit of such tariffs to ensure they comply with presidential and government orders. Tariffs exceeding the regional ceilings must be brought into compliance with such ceilings for rent and fee increases, which you have set yourself.

Ceilings must be brought down 25% or lower within a week.
In addition, subsidy payments are frequently behind schedule, information about such payments is unavailable or receiving such payments requires too much red tape, and so recipients don't know exactly when they will get the money. I have been told the back subsidies are promised for June in some regions. This is inadmissible. The subsidies must be paid immediately. There is a declarative principle.

Ladies and gentlemen, you all know that the regional heads bear a huge political responsibility for this, and that this responsibility is non-negotiable. I beg you to use all your power to ensure that by Monday we have an entirely different picture. Abuses by municipal authorities, managing companies and regional tariff regulatory bodies must be stopped immediately.