09 March 2004 08:51
PUTIN ANNOUNCED APPOINTMENTS TO NEW CABINET
MOSCOW. March 9 (Interfax) - President Vladimir Putin has announced key appointments in the new Cabinet of Prime
Minister Mikhail Fradkov.
Dmitri Kozak was appointed chief of the government staff in the
rank of minister and Igor Ivanov was appointed Security Council
At a meeting with the leaders of the Kremlin administration and several acting Cabinet members, he announced that
Alexander Zhukov was appointed deputy prime minister, Sergei Lavrov foreign minister, Sergei Ivanov defense minister,
Alexei Kudrin finance minister, Rashid Nurgaliyev interior minister, Sergei Shoigu emergency situations minister, German
Gref economics and trade minister, Alexei Gordeyev agriculture and fisheries minister, Viktor Khristenko industry and
energy minister, Mikhail Zurabov health and social development minister, Andrei Fursenko education and science minister,
Alexander Sokolov culture and information minister, Yury Trutnev natural resources minister, Yury Chaika justice
minister and Igor Levitin transport and communications minister.
secretary.
The new government will comprise 17 instead of 30 ministries.
Cabinet will hold its first session on Thursday, March 11, Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Alexei Gordeyev told
journalists.
Recently-appointed Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov will chair the session. Russia creating single financial market
regulator
The new Russian government is to discuss the formation of a single structure that will regulate financial
markets.
A presidential decree on the system and structure of federal executive bodies says that a federal service for
financial markets will be set up and receive the control and supervision functions of the Federal Securities
Commission.
The service will also receive the financial market control and supervision functions of the Labor Ministry and
Anti-Monopoly Ministry, control over the Finance Ministry's audit activities and control over exchange
activities.
The government will also set up a federal finance and budget supervision service, to which Finance Ministry control
and supervision functions over budget and finance will be transferred. New Cabinet the product of administrative reforms
- Putin
"In the new structure, the ministries are consolidated. There is
more to it than mechanical merger. The goal is to put an end to
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the new Cabinet was the product of administrative reforms drafted over the last
two years.
The number of "intermediate stages in senior-level decision-
making" will be significantly reduced in the structure of the new
"The idea was for the highest executive body to be reformed effectively. It has taken nearly two years to
prepare for this in the framework of administrative reform, and this reform was to culminate without detriment to the
very process of governance," Putin said in the Kremlin.
The new Cabinet is much more compact than the previous one. It includes just one deputy prime minister and 17
ministers where there were 30 of them, Putin said.
duplication, bring together related functions and make ministries more influential and efficient and to reduce the
number of intermediate links in the making of managerial decisions," he said.
Russian Cabinet, Putin said.
"The structure must cease to act as a parallel shadow Cabinet and become an efficient up-to-date tool for
administration," he said.
"All this is being done not for those who have gathered here to be inflated with an air of self-importance, but
to make every minister personally responsible for his area," Putin said. Putin said that if he is reelected
president, "the Cabinet will shoulder all of its constitutional responsibilities."
Putin also said that if he is reelected, the constitutional resignation procedure will be purely formal for this
Cabinet.
He expressed hope that the government will never again experience the inevitable long and harmful period of taking
bureaucratic seats and dividing portfolios after the presidential election. New govt to continue economic reforms,
experts say
"The people who determined the real economic policy are the same -
Gref, Khristenko, and Kudrin - and therefore, it is unlikely that
Russia's new Cabinet will continue carrying out economic reforms, experts polled by Interfax said.
"Because the key figures of the government's economic block previously headed by Mikhail Kasyanov -
[Finance Minister Alexei] Kudrin, [Economic Development and Trade Minister German] Gref, [new Industry and Energy
Minister Viktor] Khristenko - have kept their posts, we can be sure that the economic policy will stay the same,"
Yevsei Gurvich, a representative of the Economic Expert Group, told Interfax.
"Otherwise, the economy-ministers would have been replaced," he said.
considerable changes will take place," Mikhail Delyagin, an expert with the Institute for Globalization
Problems, told Interfax.
Yevgeny Yasin, an expert with the Higher School of Economics, told Interfax he was happy with the changes to the
government "because the truly essential people, Kudrin and Gref, have remained in the government." "I
think it's very important because, in this way, the president has signaled that the economic policy, which is
manifested by these key figures, will be continued. The liberal reforms will continue: I have high hopes for Gref and
Kudrin in this respect," Yasin said.
"The new Cabinet unambiguously confirms [the country's] commitment to continuing its current reforms,"
said Stephen Dashevsky, director of the Aton company's analytical department.
Other analysts said that the recent reshuffling has brought a new member, Alexander Zhukov, to the liberal economic
team of German Gref, Alexei Kudrin, and Viktor Khristenko.
"The market has heaved a sigh of relief because the economic policy will now be handled by the people whose
appointments were expected," said Anton Struchinevsky, a Troika Dialog economist.
Analysts also hailed the appointment of Dmitry Kozak and said that they expect better coordination between the
presidential administration and the government, which will cut down on disputes within the new government.
"We are mostly interested in Dmitry Kozak's appointment to the post of head of the government's
executive office. In addition, he will be responsible for administrative reforms, the whole range of government building
issues, and, possibly, cooperation between the branches of power," said Alexander Shokhin, chairman of the
Renaissance Capital supervisory council.
[Interfax] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
