i'm hoping he's not serious

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Vedomosti

Putin re-charts economic course

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has described the hope that state intervention will put everything in its place as illusory, and set course for a liberal post-crisis development of Russia's economy. The state's role in the economy will be reduced in a steady and planned way, he promised, by using traditional market instruments, such as privatization.

Presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich told Vedomosti that the presidential administration is all behind the government's policy of reducing the state's say in the economy. True, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the state will not withdraw from large companies and banks for the time being, and may increase its stakes in businesses in the next year or two.

A member of the inner cabinet believes the prime minister's statement is a key one. "Putin is adjusting his policy, and this is a new departure in economic and political development, a second wind. Soon this will be backed up with real steps." Another official, with an eye on change, expects economic policy to become different, too. "Putin is acting as he did in the early 2000s," he said.

Yevgeny Yasin, the research director of the Higher School of Economics, agrees with the prime minister, saying "it is necessary to take determined measures. Let business feel that no one will give it money, but it will have freedom instead, with no one pestering it or sending prosecutors instead of doctors." Putin is addressing himself, not business, Yasin believes.

"It was Putin and his team that have been trying since 2003 to strip business of its competitive and market-oriented spirit," he said. "If Putin wants to carry out liberal reforms, let him dust off the old [2000] Gref program and do what he did not do at that time. There will be no need then to think up new programs for post-crisis development," the former economics minister in Yegor Gaidar's government said.

"We are wholly for liberalism, but without state support we, alas, will not get things going," said the manager of a company whose survival now critically depends on the state. "We are therefore hoping that we will be set free somewhat later."