Govt plans to restrict growth in natural monopolies' tariffs by previous year's inflation - Medvedev
MOSCOW. Oct 5 (Interfax) - The Russian government plans to restrict growth in tariffs of the so-called natural monopolies by the previous year's inflation level, Russian Prime Minister and United Russia party Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said.
"We have made a hard-won decision on freezing the natural monopolies' tariffs for one year. In the future, we plan to restrict growth in these tariffs by the previous year's inflation level," Medvedev said at United Russia's 14th congress on Saturday.
"This is a very serious decision for the economy. We need to see what aggregate contribution this decision can make to economic indicators and how investment programs of the infrastructural monopolies are implemented - after all, quite a lot depends on them in the country, including gas supply, power supply, and railway transportation," he said.
"At the same time, the housing and utilities prices for the population will be revised downwards virtually for the first time in our modern history, using the inflation minus 30% formula, which should also stabilize the situation and in some cases improve it," Medvedev said.
He asked the party members to monitor the situation and make sure that "this is really minus 30% rather than something else" in provinces.
