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The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
Brief outline of the speech of Boris Maltsev,
Speaker of the Tomsk Oblast State Duma, at the XXXIII Duma Session A very important event preceded this Duma Session – Message of our President, Dmitry Medvedev, to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. In his Message the head of the state outlined detailed top-priority action plans to implement a new political strategy. We support and approve the endeavor of our President to make Russia one of the world leading countries. And for us adoption of the budget is also a strategy. The budget we approve today will shape our nearest future.
And now we are going to review the 2010 budget in the first reading – this is how it is written in official documents. But in fact, it is a ‘zero’ reading since we are not approving any specific parameters but rely on the Conference Committee to do the preparatory work and then in the second reading we will approve target numbers.
The draft law on the budget is worrying by its forecasts. It has raised a lot of questions among the deputies and a deep concern over welfare of thousands of citizens of Tomsk Oblast. For example, one of the budget components is a subvention from the Ministry of Finance. In 2009, it was a little over 10bn rubles. In 2010 we expect to receive 6.4bh rubles. Also, let me remind you of another ‘gift’ of the Ministry of Finance: 100% of the mineral extraction tax will be transferred to the federal budget. It is 1bn rubles less. On top of that, we were granted a package of authorities for 381m rubles. So, overall budget losses will total about 5bn rubles. For a budget with 30bn rubles in revenues dropout revenues of 5bn rubles is too much.
We were advised to cover the deficit with the transport and beer excise taxes. We all understand it is absolutely unreal. I appeal to the leaders of the Federation Council and Tomsk Oblast representatives in the Council Vladimir Zhidkikh and Alexandr Suvorov, with a request to give special consideration to an issue about compensation of dropout revenues to the regions at a Federation Council session. These compensations are especially important for Tomsk Oblast. As for the Balance Fund approved by the Federation Council, it only amounts for 25bn rubles.
And I have nothing to reproach the Oblast Administration for. We were provided with three volumes of documents where the budget is fairly distributed among recipients of budgetary funds. Well, a thought occurred to me whether we really need a conference committee in this situation. What can it find? In essence, we do not have any reserves to increase budget revenues as well as there are no sources of socio-economic optimism; even if we draw another ruble from the health care sector in favor of education, we simply kill the former and the latter will not even notice it. However, we ought to select priorities in supporting the real sector of our economy and the public sector; establish effective incentives for innovative companies in order to implement state-of-the-art technologies and improve labor efficiency.
It is a fairly challenging task. The Oblast Administration Departments, municipal entities and real economy sector institutions have already applied for financing for their initiatives in this respect. In total, to that end 4.4bn rubles is required from the 2010 budget. In the draft budget only 0.75bn rubles has been allocated for that and this amount also includes target Oblast programs and capital construction projects. As you see, it is almost 7 times less than what we are asked for, what is required to cope with many vital issues.
This is the true state of affairs; these are the undisclosed possibilities of our draft budget. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance has said that ‘one of the key objectives of the 2010 budget should be its potential to be used as a major tool to boost the economy on the way out of the crisis.’ And the federal budget is able to meet such an objective to some extent. The budget of our region would also like to be as strong but the actual situation is different. In our circumstances we should first and foremost be careful that none of our budget forecasts cancels out our recent social achievements. There are challenges of course, but it is quite feasible. The load on the Oblast budget to finance social support activities will grow 16%, which means that we will keep all basic social support activities that have been in place for the Tomsk Oblast population and even more, but the financing in 2010 will be provided solely from the regional budget. We must launch an extensive campaign against social and economic disparity, abuse and corrupt practices – all that breeds inappropriate spending of the budget. Our major goal is not to affect sustainability of budgets at all levels and not to allow their deficits grow.
When dealing with social problems we are guided by a good example. Our federal government, the State Duma, have adopted an outstanding decision to raise pensions by 46% on average in the next year regardless of the severest crisis. This is an unprecedented growth of pensions in our country. And they could have done with a small increase having quite fairly justified their decision by the crisis. But even the current emergency conditions cannot justify worse employment terms. We cannot allow that minimum salaries go down. We cannot allow even the smallest concession in any of our social programs. Finally, given the current circumstances we must protect the interests of the Tomsk Oblast citizens and do everything we can to maintain the cost of their living at a decent level. We must not allow release of the inflation spiral. And here, all levels of authority together with the economic and social sectors must act together as never before, with maximum responsibility, effort, coordination, determination and dedication. It will be a difficult cooperation but it is highly urgent today and vital for proper management of the social and economic life of the region. Only by joint efforts can we succeed in implementing the idea of our Governor to carry out a pilot project ‘Tomsk Oblast as an innovation generating and promoting region’ with the key objective to achieve high level of regional economy and social welfare of the Oblast citizens.
However, we should be aware that the challenging situation that we are facing is capable of shaking the foundations of the region and ruining our way of life. It is very simple. Aggravation of the situation and deliberate or unintentional boost to conflicts will inevitably result in confusion of minds, uncertainty in our institutions, dissociation, and political instability in the end. Any effort will be perceived with emotion and sometimes with open prejudice, distrust and rejection. Political decisions will no longer be generated in fair and open discussions in the Oblast parliament but rather will come out of political machinery involving, unfortunately, parties, movements, hunters for positions and deputy seats, top officials and the media. The citizens will naturally have doubts. All that is fraught with serious consequences for the plans of our region. We may lose identity of our commitments and most time will be taken up by arguments. The government will lose credit with the people and we all will lose confidence in effectiveness of our joint efforts. These are not mere words and idle fancies. Over the last years such a sad fate befell many regions and even countries of the former Soviet Union. I am sure that any attempts to spread hostility and uncertainty and employ unfair ‘backstage’ practices have never succeeded in our region; I am confident that nothing of the kind will happen today since we do not have serious conflicts of interests.
Today we are passing a challenging but, I hope, fair budget. We have calculated it well. Yet it will be passed on to the Conference Committee for even more careful review and assessment in order to find undisclosed reserves, if any. We must, we have to improve the quality of services which the state provides to the citizens. Not everything there depends on financing. Even with a considerable shortage of funds we defined the quality of a human life as a top priority. And these are our grounds. This is what our draft budget has stemmed from. By the way, we do not claim that we are unaware of the drawbacks of our budget. We do know there are shortcomings.
We cannot agree with halved financing of school meals, high public administration costs, almost 70% less spending for roads… Insufficient amounts have been budgeted for salaries to public sector workers, which cam create serious problems with actual salaries. Very little has been provided to stimulate the economy, support will only be given to agricultural manufacturers. And all that is only a small visible portion of the problems that the proposed budget is facing. Following our instructions the Audit Chamber has provided its opinion on this version of the budget and is continuing working on it. They have already identified serious faults and the deputies have provided their comments. The Conference Committee will analyze all those issues. And we will try to arrive at a joint solution.
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