Chess on the Far Eastern board: Putin’s Shah to Minister Ishaev
There are, of course, progress. It would be foolish to ignore them, but sometimes it seems that in our country there is a very solid interested force, which its main goal is to see the dissolution of positive work in the swamps of bureaucracy and corruption worthlessness. Previously, it had a well-defined name and was called sabotage or outright sabotage. Today, such words are preferred to be replaced by more politically correct ones, but the real state of affairs hardly changes due to such political correctness.
Not so long ago, the problem of the development of the Far East forced Vladimir Putin to respond in rather harsh tones to the activities of the new ministry for the Russian Government - the Ministry for the Development of the Far East, headed by Viktor Ishaev. When Viktor Ivanovich was approved for a ministerial post, they were guided not only by his vast experience in terms of work in the Far East region, but also by the level of trust on the part of the local population. Ishaev headed the Khabarovsk Territory for 18 years, in 2009 he received the post of Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Far Eastern Federal District, and since May of this year he has been the Minister for the Development of the Far East. The track record of Viktor Ishaev's work in the region gave certain hopes related to the fact that this person can really actively begin to solve the problems that have accumulated over the years. However, a miracle has not yet happened, and the proverb that there is no warrior alone in the field could fully characterize the activities of both Ishaev himself and the ministry he heads. But the problem is that there seem to be too many warriors, and they all wear different uniforms and adhere to different charters ...
The fact is that the Ministry of Eastern Development has not conducted any truly intelligible actions for the development of the Far Eastern part of Russia, and if it did, then such an action was conceived, sprayed and mixed with the sticky quagmire of the bureaucracy that returns even the best undertaking to its original positions and minimizing efficiency.
It is this state of affairs that caused certain questions from the president. Putin expressed a clear bewilderment over why the Government has not yet proposed a program for the development of the Far East and Transbaikalia, although this was discussed in the middle of summer. The president expressed his bewilderment by delaying the preparation of the program during the State Council held on the Far Eastern region, its demographic and socio-economic problems. Putin made it very clear that for the time being, the instructions for preparing a regional development program were simply ignored. And such a “message” at the State Council was addressed, among other things, to Viktor Ishaev.
In response to the presidential criticism, Ishayev said that all the questions on delaying the preparation of the program are related to the fact that they received real authority to prepare it in the Ministry of Eastern Development only in mid-November, and it’s not possible to prepare such a serious document in a couple of weeks. In addition, the minister announced that corruption networks and the absence of a legislative base prevent him from working ...
If you believe Minister Ishaev, then it is completely incomprehensible why the very powers to prepare the draft program for the development of the Far East were transferred to the Ministry of Eastern Development only in November, while the ministry itself began work in May. It turns out that about six months in this segment of the Government were doing work that can be called improvisational ... Well, in fact: there are no plans, there are no programs, there are no authorities, but there are not those, but then there is the ministry itself, which means you need to do something, to justify their existence.
Assuming that it was so, the question arises: why did President Putin’s instructions have to be executed as early as July 2012 of the year, but are not executed until now. After all, even if the relevant ministry did not have the authority to conduct relevant management activities, then who was involved in preparing the program? .. Most likely, there was a classic conflict of separation of powers, which boils down to the famous Russian proverb about seven nannies and their one-eyed child ...
In other words, there are a lot of ministries that in one way or another deal with the Far Eastern problems (Ministry of Regional Development, Ministry of East Development, Ministry of Labor, and others), and therefore it is extremely difficult to single out a single person in charge. It turns out that Vladimir Putin asks a person who, by definition, was supposed to deal with the creation of a balanced program, but this person (Minister Ishayev) said that he, in fact, was not allowed to show his abilities by mid-November. Then immediately a series of other questions: who did not give? Who pulled the blanket over himself? And if others were blanking, then where is the program they created? ..
In general, there is a feeling that if it were not for the next meeting of the State Council, then the Government of the Russian Federation would have long turned the hands on each other, postponing the decision of such an urgent issue as the development of the Far East.
Now, as has often happened, the president had to intervene directly, and demand from a strictly defined person, namely Minister Viktor Ishayev, specific actions to prepare the program. To this end, Putin allocates more than enough time - until the end of the first quarter of 2013, and announces that he is waiting for concrete proposals. As they say, better late than never ...
On his own behalf, Vladimir Putin proposes the idea of a certain tax amnesty for businessmen who are going or have already gathered to invest in the economy of Transbaikalia and the Far East. The essence of the proposal is that within a decade not to collect the federal part of the income tax for those representatives of the business community who decide to invest more than half a billion rubles in enterprises of the region.
Economists consider such a proposal by the president to be very timely, but not sufficient. After all, the Far East borders on China, and therefore enterprises will have to compete in many respects precisely with Chinese, as is customary to say, partners. Today, even with the tax benefits outlined by Putin, this is unlikely to work out. We will have to apply much more radical measures in order to activate the production process in the Far East. After all, preferences exclusively to large businesses will not always contribute to an increase in labor activity on the part of ordinary people in the region. And not every large industrialist will be ready to use the tax benefits obtained to open new highly efficient jobs. It will be much easier for him (a major industrialist) to restrict himself to a raw material path and without much hesitation to overtake the extracted wealth into China, South Korea or Japan. And then from there products will come to Russia, created on the basis of Russian raw materials, but at completely different prices. The vicious circle that takes place now.
It turns out that for the development of the Far East this vicious circle will have to be cut. But this, apparently, is the main difficulty. Indeed, it is one thing to attract money bags for their even more self-filling, and it is quite another thing to attract workers, engineers, scientists, teachers, and medical personnel. All these people are clearly not impressed with the fact that the government is making tax concessions to large investors. “What do we need?” They will say, and such complaints are clearly not without foundation.
That is why tax breaks should concern not only multimillionaire investors, but also those who will conduct direct work on the development of the Far East and Transbaikalia. To differentiate here: to one, government benefits, to others, the hope of a kindly gifted with benefits to private owners with big money — to put it mildly, is not quite productive.
Viktor Ishayev clearly will have to offer solutions to this problem. The main thing is that his department should not have its own “Yelkin-Vasiliev”, which the very concept of “regional development” can understand only in terms of developing its own business programs and bank accounts in the Far East. And also: let Ishayev and the whole ministry headed by him have enough powers this time ...
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