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Izvestia November 9, 2005 A conference in Cape Town discusses the situation in RussiaAuthor: not indicated
The state administration reforms won't be effective at all, and there was no point in launching them. Bureaucrats continue to take bribes, and the state only encourages them to do so. There's a lot of money in Russia, but the government has no idea how to spend it sensibly. These are the discouraging conclusions from a business conference organized by RBK (Russian Business Consulting), which closed yesterday in Cape Town. Initially, the forum was supposed to discuss cooperation between Russia and South Africa. Conference participants joked that they had to go all the way to South Africa to discuss Russia's domestic problems. And those problems remain the same: stalled reforms, corruption, too much money in the economy, and not enough investment activity. "The state administration reforms have been reduced to nothing but a technical division of government bodies into ministries and agencies," said Andrei Nechayev, former federal economy minister, now head of the Russian Finance Corporation. According to him, there hasn't been any practical effect. State pressure on private companies hasn't been reduced; the number of bureaucrats has only grown. "State regulation in Russia is an impermeable membrane - it can only be pentrated at great expense," said Viktor Pleskachevsky, chairman of the Duma property committee. According to him, a Soviet-era collective farm required only one accountant or bookkeeper - but now companies have to maintain entire departments to prepare reports for state agencies. And the state agencies don't even read most of them. State participation in economic processes is constantly growing. "Specific individuals manage property on behalf of the state," Nechayev said (state property includes "9,000 federal state unitary enterprises, and several thousand municipal unitary enterprises and open stock companies with state participation"). The state isn't coping with its responsibilities. State representatives tried to justify themselves. "The administrative reforms are developing. Much has been done, in particular, access to state information was approved and the federal licensing law was passed," said Tver Governor Dmitry Zelenin in his own defense. He added that 30% of the federal enterprises would be liquidated (their total number is 19,000). Still, state regulation is needed, according to Yevgeny Dedkov, head of the Administrative Department of the Industry and Energy Ministry. According to Dedkov, the state should have the absolute right to control foreign access to strategic industry sectors. Even in South Africa, as conference participants admitted, investing is easier and safer than in Russia. Russian companies are investing there. Translated by Denis Shcherbakov |
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