Igor Rudensky: Anti-recessionary plan of Russian government should be amended
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Penza, 30 January 2015. PenzaNews. The State Duma deputy from the Penza region Igor Rudensky, “United Russia” member heading the Committee on Economic Policy, Innovation Development and Entrepreneurship in the lower house of Parliament, said the government of the Russian Federation should make amendments to the anti-recessionary plan.
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“The first thing to do is to clearly define the priorities and budget expenditures. The anti-recessionary plan has 10% budget cuts in almost every expenditure item. It should be reviewed in detail: what items of expenditure can and should be reduced, and what items, on the contrary, should be better funded,” Igor Rudensky said during the “government hour” in the State Duma on Friday, January 30.
According to him, now is not the time for new expensive projects, which are not required in the near future, but a good spot for increased financing of the investment projects that are underway or in the final stages.
Igor Rudensky noted the government should also support import substitution projects.
“These are the projects in agriculture, production of medicines and equipment. We must pay the most attention to sectors and areas that will give multiplicative effect once developed. The first one is housing, which is 70% funded through mortgages. It is necessary to provide affordable loans and keep mortgage easily accessable. We should not fold, but on the contrary, actively promote construction of new infrastructure, such as the Moscow–Kazan high-speed highway,” he said.
According to the State Duma deputy, another important task to be solved with the anti-recessionary plan is to support SMEs.
“We need to reduce the number of government bodies auditing small business. There are over 50 such institutions, while in developed countries there are no more tdefine the range of auditing bodies and reduce their number to two bodies: one for carrying out checks on the consumer market, one more for controlling production and operation activities. These institutions must include all of the existing supervisory bodies. Once we do it, the problem of authority duplication and excessive control will disappear,” the deputy said.
According to Igor Rudensky, it is important to reduce insurance premiums up to 14% for small businesses, and new taxes and fees should not be increased or created.
“The third task is to support export. Today, many Russian companies that export anything else but oil are able to compete with foreign producers and supply products to foreign markets. It is important to support them, and not introduce additional export duties when it comes to high-tech export. The Federal Antimonopoly Service must review the application of 2014 pricing control method in respect to high-tech products. Currently, this method actually prevents non-oil exports by introducing huge turnover penalties for supplying products abroad,” the deputy of the State Duma reminded.
The fourth objective, named by Igor Rudensky is the decrease in the key interest rate of the Bank of Russia.
“Development of Small businesses and industry is not possible with the current key interest rate of the Bank of Russia. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce inflation to the level planned for 2015 – that is, up to 8% – in the near future,” the head of the Duma committee said.