Putin creates presidential economic council
MOSCOW. July 16 (Interfax) - Vladimir Putin has signed a decree setting up an economic council under the Russian President.
The new body will coordinate efforts aimed at ensuring sustainable socio-economic development, the Kremlin's press service reports.
The decree comes into force on the day it was signed.
As an advisory body under the head of state, the council will prepare proposals on socio-economic policies, implementation strategies and mechanisms for promoting the sustainable development and technological renewal of the economy, the decree says.
The council will provide information support and expert analysis for the president as regards the macro-economic situation, work out recommendations for various socio-economic fields, define development stages and tools, analyze the performance of individual sectors and branches, detect problems hampering sustainable development and technological renewal, detect and forecast systemic socio-economic risks, and prepare proposals for the management and prevention of risks and minimization of their potential negative impact.
Also among its tasks are the complex assessment of legislative projects and presidential decrees pertaining to social-economic policies, the modeling and monitoring of their implementation and that of the most significant socio-economic reforms, the analysis of emerging problems and the drafting of proposals on how to bring all of the planned social-economic reforms to full fruition.
The council will look into ways of improving coordination between federal, regional and municipal executive bodies in addressing urgent social-economic matters that require such coordination, improving the investment climate in Russia, creating better conditions for small and medium-size business, supporting domestic business initiatives that seek a better favorable investment climate and unhindered business development, assessing the results of and assisting the implementation of "road maps" designed to improve the investment climate. It will also examine proposals for encouraging domestic business initiative, analyze the proposed economic and social reforms and how they are carried out, look into ways of clearing obstacles impeding their progress, and engage public organizations and mass media in debates on the vectors, stages, methods and mechanisms of socio-economic development.
The council will be chaired by Putin and will consist of 31 members, including Economic Development Minister Andrei Belousov and Presidential Aide Elvira Nabiullina as its deputy chairmen.
Other members will include the Kremlin's chief of staff Sergei Ivanov, First Vice Premier Igor Shuvalov, Vice Premiers Arkady Dvorkovich and Olga Golodets, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Central Bank President Sergei Ignatyev, presidential business ombudsman Boris Titov, President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE) Alexander Shokhin, and a number of prominent economists, among them Higher School of Economics Scientific Director Yevgeny Yasin.