Monday will be the first meeting of the working group of the Economic Council under the President of structural reforms and may 25 will be collected and the Council with the participation of Vladimir Putin. The main reports at the Council are expected to perform ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, business Ombudsman Boris Titov and the Minister of economic development Alexei Ulyukayev.
The absolute favorite of the “struggle concepts” looks like Alexei Kudrin. In April, he returned in a big political game, becoming responsible for the development of a programme of reforms: ex-Finance Minister was appointed Deputy Chairman of the economic Council under the President and the elected head of the Board of the Center for strategic razrabotok.
Its position Kudrin expressed regularly, in particular through state television. For example, on may 21, he gave an interview to the program “Vesti on Saturday”.
“You can say that the bottom (of the crisis. — “Газета.Ru”) is passed, most likely, probably, we are somewhere close to this definition are. But, unfortunately, because the old model of the economy developed, the new has not yet formed, even after the bottom, we will stay on this day”, — he said in particular.
According to Kudrin, the Russian economy now lacks “a specific determination”. “We delay important reforms. This will be the reason and postpone the start of economic growth”, — considers ex-the Minister of Finance.
However, he constantly warns against the use of recipes of their main opponents — the members of the Stolypin club, and co-authors of the program “Economics of growth” Sergey Glazyev and Boris Titov.
As neither of them became part of Kudrin headed the working group “Priorities for structural reforms and sustainable economic growth”, whose first meeting will be held may 23 at the Center for strategic research. A member was only the most “moderate” member of the Stolypin club, the former Deputy head of the Ministry of economic development, Deputy Chairman of VEB Andrei Klepach.
Kudrin said in a TV interview said that it is not necessary to pump money into the economy, as it will give a short-term effect, and it is necessary to carry out structural reforms to ensure long-term sustainable growth. “The most important thing today in our term, our economy is economic growth. How do we come to economic growth by one to two years is to inflate another bubble. We will have some recovery, and then collapse… we again add money, someone, something will have… But in two years, this source, this fuse runs out”, — said Kudrin.
To fill the economy with money
That Glazyev and Titov TV no rostrum, but they have finished the program “Economics of growth”, which by order of the Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is now studying in ministries and departments. Most important is that this concept has been sharply criticized by liberal economists and officials (in the camp Kudrin are such heavyweights as the Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov, Chairman of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina and the head of Sberbank German Gref), was the proposal to “give money”.
In the program of the Stolypin club, says that there is pent-up demand in the corporate sector for investment resources. To satisfy it is mainly due to the target issue by the Bank of Russia. It is necessary “to ensure investment of no less than 1.5 trillion rubles a year to support investment growth by financing development institutions and refinancing the commercial banks, including in the framework of the development of project Finance, said in the program. Boris Titov held on the days of meeting of the Stolypin club, said (his words leads Agency RNS) that “nothing terrible” in talking about the issue no, if this issue of “controlled and in very limited quantities. The target emission will allow to profit from each invested ruble, he said.
“The state has the ability to issue money. Actually the issue goes constantly” — says Titov. In his opinion, the regulator is providing support to the banking sector “trillions”, although it “is also a big influence on the economy of not having”.
The retirement age will still increase
The authors of the “growth Economy” we are confident that the implementation of their ideas will lead to growth of the economy by at least 5% per year. Andrei Klepach, however, said about 3%, and Alexei Kudrin, as already noted, suggests not to chase the pace, and focus on painful reforms. In particular, he defends the necessity of raising the retirement age for men and women to 63 years.
To see retire and die
With the increase in the retirement age to 65 years the average Russian man will be able to live in retirement for about 11 months, and in some regions… →
“One of my proposals — after the parliamentary elections of this year to announce a new model of the pension system, raising the retirement age. And the increase in stretch at least 12 years. Because if you raise the retirement age by six months every year, to make it even for three years, will require six years. And to women to increase from 55 to 63 years — for 16 years. In order not to lose three years, you need to announce the changes now, and begin to reform after the elections”, — told ex-the Minister of Finance in an interview with Harvard Business Review.
According to Kudrin, the issue of pension reform is in second place among tasks to improve the investment climate.
“The number of employees in the country decreases, the number of pensioners increases. Now, when wages in real terms grow longer, we should at least maintain pensions in real terms. Because pension contributions already can’t provide, we have more to get into the budget system in the amount of approximately 200 billion rubles per year. So the price of the pension problems is incredibly high,” — said Kudrin.
The proposal to raise the retirement age have Alexei Ulyukayev. This item is contained in the materials of economic development for the meeting of the Economic Council, which were made public on may 22. The Agency notes that a return to high growth rates is impossible even with the return of high oil prices.
“Our calculations show that even under conditions of high oil prices, that is, above $50 per barrel, returning to their previous growth trajectory of 5-7% annually — almost impossible”, — the document says.
To invest a lot
The emphasis in the Ministry of economic development propose to make on the investment policy. The report indicates that the optimal ratio between current consumption and investment according to the maximization of production, according to different models, is in the range of 22-25% of GDP. In order to reach this ratio, investments in the coming years needs to grow at 7-8% per year, with the continuing trend of stagnation of current consumption. Investpolitiki for output on the growth rate of capital investment consists of three points: the establishment and maintenance of investment resources, creating conditions for the transformation of savings into investment, to stimulate investment activity through the mechanisms of state support. The last item largely echoes the initiatives of the Stolypin club, and Andrei Klepach.
The office considers it necessary to drastically reduce administrative burden and pressure on business. Here is the reduction of various types of reporting, reducing the number of inspections due to the acceleration of the reform of the control, supervision and implementation of risk based approaches to review obsolete mandatory requirements for the most common types of supervision. It is also important to ensure the stability of the regulatory regime for business, believe in Ministry of economic development, in practice, to minimize the “situational” changes to the legislation imposing new requirements and costs for business, either through the regulatory impact assessment for the second reading in the state Duma, or through the tools at the disposal of the presidential administration. “According to our estimates, only through establishing order in the government regulation of business can reduce costs by several hundred billion rubles per year”, — stated in the materials of the Ministry.
Need and drastically reducing the risks of illegal criminal prosecution of entrepreneurs through the continued work to change how the criminal and criminal procedural legislation and the system of motivation of law enforcement and the judicial system.
It should be noted that the point of significant improvement in business conditions will in all three reports. Perhaps here the difference is only in details. The key differences will remain in the area of monetary policy and the state’s participation in the investment process. It is obvious that Vladimir Putin will not make decisions about the parameters of its programme on may 25. The selection process will be long and difficult, and competition between think tanks — hard.
However, the resulting set of abstracts are almost one hundred percent probability will be a compromise and Titov Kudrin — Glazyev: painful reforms with delayed effect and stimulate growth at the expense of cheap and long money.
