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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 XLI Duma Session Despite the heat wave in a number of European countries and the central regions of Russia the previous month was rich in numerous events of different levels: from the World Cup final to a spy scandal.
Both the Russians and world community were stunned with a terrorist attack against the Baksan Hydro Power Plant. This tragedy once again showed that the strategic facilities unfortunately continue to be easy of access for terrorists and the security and counter-terrorist system is of a very low level. This is true for our Oblast as well. All the authority levels and departments shall draw serious conclusions from this tragedy.
The session of the Council of Legislators of the Russian Federation was held in the Kremlin. The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took part in the session and expressed his discontent with the results of the anti-corruption efforts. 'Although Russia now has a solid anti-corruption legal foundation, there has been little headway so far in combating corruption, - said the President and called the regional parliaments to put more active use of the existing legal instruments, strengthen the legislative bodies' supervisory powers, provide anti-corruption expert examination of all draft laws.
Entrance exams in Tomsk institutes and universities are in the full swing. Our universities have to overreach themselves to overcome the so-called 'demographic gap'. It is too early to total the results but it is already obvious that the rating of our universities is high and the school graduates make right decisions selecting among Tomsk institutes and universities.
The crisis matters are still relevant in the world media. Also in our country and in Tomsk Oblast politicians and political analysts, business people and citizens like to reason upon crisis. Some say that crisis is over; the others insist that it is going on; the rest conclude that we are on track.
I think any citizen can estimate for themselves the status of economy in the Oblast not knowing the statistics. Visit a furniture store and the truth will broke upon you. Large area of show rooms, lots of furniture for one's money, and no buyers. The situation is not simple, and without certain measures taken by the fall, we can possibly face the second wave of the crisis, which is announced by political analysts and economists.
First, although the real estate market is revived, the rate of sales is still far behind from the sales of 2007-2008. The taken measures to attract the citizens to construct and purchase the housing and other real estate are insufficient and academic, without any know-how in this respect. Civil construction, furniture and appliance stores can be rescued by the citizens only. The economy can only be led out of the trouble by the citizens with their purchases. This shall be supported by money - salaries, pension benefits, affordable loans. Something is being done in this regard. Pension benefits have grown almost twice in comparison with 2008, the Oblast average salary has increased by 26.6%.
As of June 01 of the current year a number of mortgage loans grew 1.9 times reaching the 2009 level. The dynamics is good here but the cash loans are still lagged behind and failed to reach even the level of the previous year. We need to work on it too. We understand that a poor person is the most reliable mechanism of economy. Upon receiving money he immediately transforms it into demand.
International experience is pretty valuable here.
Australia - the money is just dispensed. This money is called anti-crisis bonuses. Each school student, each farmer and each family are given this money. Moreover, all bank loans until USD 1m are provided with free three-year guarantees.
The UK gives government guarantees for loans of enterprises with the staff over 250 employees.
The USA - Loans for USD 3,000 for each newly employed. Already in 2008 I proposed to allocate money for small enterprises not for their plans on paper but for each newly employed. No, we can't, but why can the US?
Kazakhstan - decided to increase pension benefits, scholarships, salary for the state-paid workers by 25% this year and by 30% next year. It will certainly facilitate a large inflation, and the Kazakh know about this but they accept risk to cope with the crisis.
All these examples show that the state do their best to increase the demand. The state will get theirs a bit later. Today the state authorities lose but yesterday they find. Some foreign heads of state support their citizens with money. In any forms. And they do the right thing. I feel envy. Yes, we are poorer but we also do something which I said above. Why not to step up the work and follow the example of progressive countries? What hinders us from doing so? We need to take into account - the citizens don't want to wait until the state gives them something. The reality forces people to be more active in searching the ways to increase their welfare. By contrast, the public officers search for techniques to strangle these initiatives. It is wrong.
The housing demand will decrease soon. Even in the rich USA over 30% of the citizens don't have and most of them even don't want to have their own houses. It's inconvenient; this reduces mobility of labor forces, along with some other reasons against. What instead? Guest houses (commercial apartment buildings). Our citizens renting out their rooms, apartments - these are the forerunners of future guest houses. We shall investigate this experience, develop beneficial regulations for those who will build guest houses at their own expense. This new industry is only struggling through as grass shoots through the asphalt, but it lives! I think it will be right to start working on the program 'Siberian Guest House' already today. For reference - there were over 800 guest houses in Tomsk in 1917. So we won't be in the vanguard!
Yes, money, if there is some, is worth being given out. But after all there are other more realistic and reliable sources of money. Nothing new.
We need to apply energies to activate the available pool of new high-paid and high-capacity working positions the sooner the better. Here I talk about acceleration of starting the enterprise manufacturing MDF. Currently 80 people are employed there. By the start-up the number of employees will reach 600 people. When the second line of Seversk Glass Factory is started-up it will employ 100 people more. New working places will be created by a manufacturing complex for advanced wood processing at the Green Mill. We need to assist Tomlesdrev to revive the construction of plant manufacturing large scale plywood. Large pool of new working places comes from development of small and medium business. As you remember, for 2009 we planned a limit of 5,000 new working places in this area. This was reached. We need to continue our active and specific efforts in this respect.
About the agenda
Lately, the activity of our Duma in its matter is getting closer and closer to the parliaments of the developed countries. Even yesterday the issues related to economy, forming political, state and municipal systems prevailed over our decisions, but today we deal mostly with the true-life, every-day matters of the citizens. More frequently we consider the issues related to education, human environment and private life of the citizens. This is reflected in the today's session agenda.
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