OREANDA-NEWS. March 17, 2009. Good afternoon, colleagues. As you know, the Government meeting on Thursday will discuss amendments to this year's federal budget and the budgets of state extrabudgetary funds.

The amendments will allow us to channel another 1.5 trillion roubles to anti-crisis measures with no detriment to social welfare expenditures on previously made commitments.

379 billion roubles have been earmarked for transfers to the Pension Fund and other extrabudgetary funds. We also intend extra banking allocations and extra transfers of 150 billion roubles to the regions, plus loans worth the same amount. Russian Railways will receive 54.6 billion roubles. 35 billion roubles will go for war veterans' housing. 100 billion will go to the reserve. Other anti-crisis measures concern loan interest subsidies.

The Government adopted a comprehensive anti-crisis programme last autumn, and supplemented it later with urgent measures.

In particular, decisions have been made to extend support to certain industries, pivotal companies and vulnerable groups of the population.

Some of the announced anti-crisis measures are already being implemented, for example, the funding of regional labour market stabilisation programmes has started. This subject came under discussion during a meeting of the Regional Development Commission in Novokuznetsk. We expect regional authorities to work actively on employment programmes.

Applications are being accepted to spend maternity capital on mortgage payments. Steps have been made to improve the banking system. Agro-industrial companies have gained access to subsidised loans and farm machine leases.

I have signed an executive order on subsidising airfares for residents of the Russian Far East younger than 24 and older than 60. We have repeatedly discussed such subsidies for six or seven months now.

People from the Russian Far East will have their airfares reduced by half for flights to Moscow, St Petersburg and the Black Sea coast from May 15 till September 15. Such seasonal tickets go on sale on April 1.

We need now to take stock of all previous anti-crisis decisions and draw up a comprehensive document to summarise their analysis. The document will comprise previous decisions, whose implementation will go on alongside new plans up to the end of the year.

I think we should focus on post-crisis national developmental priorities with the emphasis on the global financial and economic crisis and on the need to stick to national development plans up to 2020.

The document will be submitted to the State Duma in a package with budget bills, and will certainly appear in the media. I think experts, trade unions, political parties, the Public Chamber, entrepreneurial guilds and certainly all parliamentary groups should discuss it. I believe such public discussions will bring many constructive initiatives to include in our action plan, considering the political colouring such issues have.

We will streamline and supplement our anti-crisis programme later on, too, depending on the turn the global and Russian economic situation will take.