Deputy Minister of Economic Development Andrey Belousov declined to comment yesterday on what kind of companies might be able to manage the project.
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Competition for Two State Programs
Two federal target programs, “Economic and Social Development of the Far East and Transbaikal in the Period through 2013” and “Scientific Pedagogical Base,” with a combined worth of more than 600 billion rubles, may be placed under private management in accordance with a decision of the presidium of the government. The programs represent 15-20 percent of all target program funding. There are no real contenders for the task. Otherwise, it would be one of the boldest experiments in federal budgeting in many years. Deputy Minister of Economic Development Andrey Belousov stated after the session that unsatisfactory results obtained in an analysis of the use of budget funds in the first quarter of the year led to the move.
The Far Eastern development program was approved on August 2, 2007. It is worth 556 billion rubles, of which 147.5 billion are to go for preparations for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok in 2012. Belousov stated that proposed procedures for a competition to manage the program will be ready within the next month and a half. He declined to comment yesterday on what kind of companies might be able to manage the project.
“Scientific Pedagogical Base” is a program to train scientists. It also runs through 2013 and is worth about 80 billion rubles. The Ministry of Education and Science does not foresee problems privatizing that program. Discussion of the program has been postponed to the June 23 meeting of the presidium, but Education Minister Andrey Fursenko met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to talk about it on June 12. Unlike the other target programs, that program will not entail setting up a single state management and sources say that it is considered unattractive in comparison to the larger and more dynamic programs.
Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, commented that the choice of the Far Eastern development program is a sign that the government is not meeting its deadline for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit preparations. He characterized the search for private management as finding “either an effective manager or, in the extreme case, a scapegoat.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of June 17, 2008
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