Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov underscored that five-year budgets “will give an opportunity for seamless planning.”
Photo: Dmitry Lekay
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Moscow Mayor to Revive Soviet Economy
The Moscow government on Tuesday discussed the city’s financial plan for the next three years. While city authorities are not ready to work with a three-year budget, Mayor Yuri Luzhnkov already insists on five-year planning, which will single out the Russian capital as a separate economy in the country.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov on Tuesday called for the revival of five-year economy planning, popular in the Soviet Union. Mr. Luzhkov underscored that the five-year budget “will give an opportunity for seamless planning.” Moscow, however, is still not ready to draft three-year budgets. The first three-year plan is likely to be enacted in 2009, the city hall says.
City authorities presented an economic prognosis for up until 2011 which showed a stark difference with general trends in Russia. Unlike federal authorities, Moscow is not worried about demography issue, expecting city population to grow 82,000 people from 2006 to 2010. Unemployment levels are expected to remain the same through 2010, at 1.4 percent. Federal authorities forecast the number of the jobless to shrink from 7.3 percent in 2007 to 6.8 percent in 2010.
The Moscow government predicts the services industry to move closer to retail as the market’s leader, while federal officials expect retail to develop much faster than services. In 2006, retail turnover came to 1.8 trillion rubles and services turnover at 693 billion rubles. For 2010, city officials expect 2.6 trillion and 1.5 trillion rubles, respectively.
Industrial growth in the capital is also outpacing rates in regions as industry in Moscow adds 12 percent annually, compared to 4 percent in Russia on the average.
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