The annual special Direct Line with Vladimir Putin was broadcast live by Channel One, Rossiya 1, Rossiya 24 and Russia Today TV channels, and Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Rossii radio stations.
June 15, 2017
16:00
Moscow
Direct Line with Vladimir Putin.
Tatyana Remezova:Good afternoon, we are live. This is Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, a joint project by Channel One and Rossiya 1 TV channels. You can also watch the broadcast live on Rossiya 24, and listen to a live radio broadcast on Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Rossii radio stations.
The anchors of Direct Line are Tatyana Remezova and Dmitry Borisov.
Dmitry Borisov: Good afternoon,
First of all, I would like to introduce our colleagues who will be helping us today. Maria Gladkikh and Natalya Yuryeva are in the call centre; and here in the studio we have Vera Krasova, Nailya Asker-zade, Olga Pautova and Olga Ushakova.
They are surrounded by people who were in the spotlight of the last year’s most dramatic news reports, people who arguably have shaped today’s Russia in one way or another.
Now to Tatyana Remezova.
Tatyana Remezova:President of Russia Vladimir Putin is here, in the studio, live.
Maria Gladkikh:Good afternoon,
We are in the call centre, which plays a key role in Direct Line. Our centre has already received 1.1 million calls. You can submit your question to Vladimir Putin right now. The telephone number has not changed: 8 (800) 200 4040. You can also use 04040 for SMS and MMS messages.
Natalya Yuryeva:In addition to SMS messages and telephone calls, our operators also accept video questions that can be submitted either from the moskva-putinu.ru website or by using a special mobile application called Moskva Putinu (Moscow to Putin).
You can also submit questions using the programme’s official accounts on the VKontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks. For the first time, you can talk to the head of state by direct video link via OK Live, as well as the Moskva-Putinu application. This way, not only will the President hear you, but he will also be able to see you.
Go ahead, make a call. We will be taking questions until the end of the broadcast. You still have time. Maybe it will be your question that Vladimir Putin answers.
Maria Gladkikh:Another innovation in this year’s Direct Line is the SN Wall communications platform that enables us to monitor, in real time, how the audience is discussing the programme on social media. More than 300,000 comments have already been posted on Facebook, VKontakte, Instagram and Twitter.
Those who need sign interpretation can watch the broadcast on Public Television of Russia and on our website.
Dmitry Borisov: Good afternoon, Mr President.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon.
Dmitry Borisov: Our call centre has been receiving phone calls for 12 days, and 2 million messages of various kinds have been received to this point. The top five of the most sensitive issues for Russians includes growing prices, declining living standards, housing and utilities, healthcare and of course, there are many personal requests.
Tatyana Remezova:That said, I would like to highlight a major difference from previous Direct Lines.
Most of the messages we have received are not about the present, but about the future: how will our country live in the years to come, what will its relations with other countries be like? This could be due to the fact that we are in a pre-election year, when people have more questions to their leaders, to you primarily, of course.
Dmitry Borisov:However, before we start talking about the future, let me begin with the present.
We have been hearing many optimistic assessments of the state of the Russian economy lately. Can we say, would it be right to assume that the economic crisis is over?
Vladimir Putin: You have started with a core question, whether the economic crisis is over. I would very much like to give an affirmative answer, thereby sending a positive signal to the people. However, in the back of your mind you cannot stop thinking that something could still go wrong, something could happen.
Nevertheless, when it comes to drawing conclusions of this kind we should be guided by objective data. What are the hard facts telling us? They are telling us that the Russian economy has overcome the recession, and moved into a growth trend. I will get back to this later to explain how this conclusion can be reached and on what data it is based.
But I would like to start by making a different point and highlighting the most pressing issues that have yet to be resolved. You mentioned them in your question, by the way. What are these issues all about? Real incomes have been declining over the last several years, and what is even more alarming is the growing number of people below the poverty line with incomes below the minimum living wage.
In this regard, Russia hit a low in the early and mid-1990s, when almost one third of the country’s population lived below the poverty line, almost 40 percent or 35 to 37 percent, according to various estimates, almost 40 million people. This was the all-time low, while the highest indicators in this respect were reported in 2012.
In 2012, 10.7 percent of the population was below the poverty line. Unfortunately, since then this number has reached 13.5 percent. It may not seem like a lot, just a few percentage points, but we are talking about tens, and hundreds of thousands of people, their lives, so this is a matter of serious concern.
There are economic issues that have still to be addressed, above all regarding real incomes. What are these issues? They have to do with the structure of the economy that we find unsatisfactory. In this connection I have to mention low labour productivity. There will be no new jobs, and incomes will not increase, unless we improve labour productivity. This is a major issue.
We will most definitely come back to these matters and I am 100 percent certain that people will have further questions and we will go into greater detail and look further at all that makes it possible for me to say now that the recession is over and we have seen economic growth for three quarters in a row now. GDP growth is modest, but it has nonetheless held steady from one quarter to the next.
GDP growth was plus 3 percent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2016, plus 5 percent in the first quarter of this year, and up 1.4 percent in April this year. This makes for GDP growth of 0.7 percent overall for the first four months of 2017.
Industrial production is also on the rise. We had growth of 0.7 percent in the first quarter of this year. I have brought along some of the latest figures, so as not to forget anything, and I can share them with you too. These are the latest statistics.
Investment into capital assets is up 2.3 percent. We see an increase in car sales and mortgage loans, which all economies consider a clear sign of growth, and non-resource and non-energy exports are up by 19 percent.
Finally, another important macroeconomic indicator is inflation, and we have brought it down to a record low in modern Russian history. The figure today is 4.2 percent. This is an unprecedented result and it gives us reason to expect that we will reach our target figure of 4 percent by the end of the year.
The Central Bank’s gold and foreign currency reserves, our international reserves, are growing. We started 2016 with $368 billion and ended the year with $378 billion. Today, the figure is $407 billion. One of the most significant indicators that I must mention is investment into capital assets, which is growing at a faster pace than the economy as a whole.
The economy grew by 0.7 percent over the first four months of this year, while investment into capital assets was up by 2.3 percent. What does this mean in simple terms? It means that investment in developing production facilities is up by 2.3 percent, and this is laying the foundations for growth in the short term. This, of course, is a positive development that will have an impact on various aspects of the social sector too.
Which aspects? The main social sector achievement that I want to mention once again is the substantial drop in infant and maternal mortality. Infant mortality has undergone a three-fold decrease since 2000, and maternal mortality has seen a close to four-fold drop. Probably no other country’s social sector has achieved such results. This has contributed to increased life expectancy as well. The figures here are now up from just over 70 years to 72 years. Overall, these results give us reason to say that we have overcome the crisis.
Tatyana Remezova: Mr President, you yourself spoke about people’s declining real incomes, and the official statistics confirm this. When will people feel the benefits of the reviving economy?
Vladimir Putin: You know, the decline was rather steep, and so it will take some time before people will feel an improvement. As I said at the beginning, I consider this to be the most important and serious problem.
Real wages started increasing in July or August 2016 and increased 0.7 percent by the end of the year. This increase is rather difficult to see, although it reached 2.3 or 2.4 percent in April this year.
As you know, we made lump sum payments of 5,000 rubles to pensioners early this year and increased pensions for non-working pensioners by 5.4 percent starting from February 1 and later brought the overall figure to 5.8 percent. We have also indexed social pensions.
We are working with employers to increase the minimum wage. We increased it by over 20 percent last year and have also raised it this year. Overall, we are working at this so that people can feel the improvements.
Tatyana Remezova: Still, many people complain about low wages. Here are many text messages and photos of wage slips. For example, a preschool teacher at Kindergarten No. 111 in Astrakhan is paid 7,935 rubles. The slip is for May 2017. Can you live on this wage?
A medical nurse at the Vostochny Space Launch Centre received 10,246 rubles in May.
“Should a firefighter risk his life for 8,000 rubles a month?” asks Alexander Melnikov, head of a fire team from the Saratov Region.
“When will postal workers’ wages be raised? You cannot live on 3,600 rubles.”
Vladimir Putin:We will have to check the situation with salaries of 3,600 rubles to understand how this is possible. After all, there is a minimum wage in Russia, and it is more than 3,600 rubles. However, all the people you have mentioned are public sector employees who did not benefit from the wage increases under the May 2012 executive orders.
As for public sector employees who did benefit from these increases, their salaries are going up as planned, more or less. In other public sector jobs that were not covered by the May 2012 executive orders, the situation is more challenging. Their salaries were not adjusted for inflation, even though prices have gone up, and the inflation rate was quite high at 12.9 percent in 2015. Still, their wages were not adjusted for inflation. If you are telling me that this is not fair, I agree. I have raised this issue with the Government, and issued instructions to this effect. These salaries will be adjusted for inflation starting January 1, 2018.
Tatyana Remezova:Thank you.
Dmitry Borisov: We have received many calls on this subject. Let us ask the call centre to join our conversation.
Natalya, you have the floor.
Natalya Yuryeva: Mr President, we have just received a call from a medical nurse in Primorye who asked how she could survive on her salary. Socioeconomic issues are always the most sensitive, and they worry Russians the most.
I also see a question on another sensitive issue, the low salaries of teachers in the regions.
Here with us, via video conference, we now have Alyona Ostaltsova from Irkutsk.
Alyona, good afternoon, you are on, you can ask your question.
Alyona Ostaltsova:Hello, Mr President.
Vladimir Putin: Hello.
Alyona Ostaltsova:My name is Alyona Ostaltsova, and I am calling from the city of Shelekhov, Irkutsk Region. The question I have is quite common. Why are teachers paid so little? I am an elementary school teacher. I have been working for one year, but my salary has never exceeded 16,500 rubles per month. I have not received the allowance young teachers are entitled to. I love my job, and I love working with children, but with a salary like this, I have no choice. How can I live on it? Thank you.
Vladimir Putin:Alyona, you are from Irkutsk Region, is that right?
Alyona Ostaltsova: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: Shelekhov is probably a small town. I do not know whether your school is fully staffed. You and I know, and so do all other teachers across the country, that there is an objective to bring teachers’ salaries up to the regional average. If I am not mistaken, since I may not recall the exact figures, the average salary in Irkutsk Region is slightly above 30,000 rubles. The average salary in Irkutsk Region is above 30,000 rubles. And teachers’ salaries are even slightly higher in Irkutsk Region.
What happens in reality? The teachers’ money and the level of wages are managed by the school itself, and it determines the payroll and extra payments in addition to the salary. The school itself does this. Again, the payroll and additional payments. It is clear that young specialists, and you are a young specialist, usually make somewhat less than experienced teachers with longer service and all. It is unclear though why it is so much less, 50 or 70 percent – I do not understand this either. I hope that the region’s administration, the authorities that supervise education, will pay attention to this.
This is what I'm thinking: as I said, such a difference in income is unacceptable. Therefore, if this is happening, it would probably be reasonable to establish a minimum wage or a minimum ratio between the income level of young specialists and those who have a long record of service. We probably need to think about this.
Alyona Ostaltsova: Thank you very much.
Vladimir Putin: About 11,000 rubles, it is certainly strange. I repeat: wages should not differ so dramatically. We will deal with your specific case.
Tatyana Remezova: Before this broadcast, we talked to people who sent in their complaints, including complaints on this issue. Indeed, the situation is very different in various regions and largely depends on who is in charge of the region.
Over the past year, many changes have taken place in the leadership of Russian regions, something that never happened before: Buryatia, Kaliningrad, Karelia, Kirov, Mari El, Novgorod, Perm, Ryazan, Sevastopol, Tver, Tula, Udmurtia, and Yaroslavl. Why? Are all the newly appointed governors coping with their duties?
Vladimir Putin: You know, in many places the governors’ tenure in office simply ended, as many of them had worked for 10 and even more years. Frankly, it was their own idea to try working in other areas.
In other regions, we just felt that people want change, and therefore initiated the process. As to whether they are competent or not, this is primarily a question for the local people. Some of the elected regional leaders had already served for six months or a year before running for the position, so when they did, people voted for them because they knew they could trust them with managing the region, so we can say that people – the voters – believe these candidates were doing a good job. But, of course, any election, the results of any election are an upfront trust given to candidates for leadership at any level at the beginning of their work at this new high office.
Whether they succeed or not – I will return to this subject now. They have to succeed, they have everything to make it despite the fact they are relatively young. They have extensive state work and life experience; of course, you can blame it all on them – but the financial situation is not easy in the regions.
In this regard, the Federation helps for them, supports them. To solve these social issues and level wages, 40 billion rubles have been allocated in this year’s federal budget. What is more, I asked the Government to provide additional finances, and they have allocated another 10 billion rubles. Therefore, they have the support; they also have their own social programmes. They have to work and achieve results.
Tatyana Remezova: We received the following question online: ”Two weeks ago, Europe extended the anti-Russia sanctions for another year. Do you think we are ready to live under these sanctions for decades?”
Vladimir Putin: In fact, the history of Russia shows that we have usually lived under sanctions whenever Russia started to become independent and feel strong. Whenever our partners in the world saw Russia as a serious rival, they imposed various restrictions under various excuses; this has been the case throughout our history, not just in Soviet times; this was the case even before the 1917 revolution. So no surprises here.
We now know that the US Senate has drawn up another draft law on toughening these sanctions. What are the reasons for this? Nothing extraordinary is taking place. Why have they started talking about sanctions again, for no particular reason? This, of course, testifies to the ongoing domestic political struggle in the United States. In any case, this is happening and I can see no real reason for it. If it had not been Crimea or some other issue, they would still have come up with some other way to restrain Russia. The policy of containing Russia has always been presented like this.
So, what is the situation with these sanctions and what impact, if any, have they had on us? They have had an impact. Has this been fundamental in nature? I do not think so. We have been affected more by the global situation and the drop in prices for our main traditional goods – oil, gas, metals, chemicals, and so on. What view do our partners take?
The US State Department believes that these sanctions have lowered our GDP by 1 percent, the Europeans give a slightly higher figure, and the UN has calculated that we lost around $50–52 billion, and that the countries that imposed the sanctions have lost $100 billion. In other words, sanctions have proven to be a double-edged sword and harm everyone, including those who impose them.
Strange though it might sound, however, there have been advantages too. What are they? For a start, we were forced to concentrate our intelligence, talent and resources on key areas and not simply rely on oil and gas revenue. What result has this brought? We have seen real production growth in important and complex economic sectors.
We have rebuilt substantially our skills in the radio-electronics sector, and we made good progress in aircraft engineering, rocket building, pharmaceuticals, and in heavy engineering. That is not to mention agriculture. We all know that agriculture has posted growth of around 3 percent and Russia is now a leader in exports of grain and wheat. That is the result we have to show.
We have reduced substantially imports and developed our own production of pork and poultry and cover practically our entire consumption needs. What’s more, we are now looking for sales markets abroad.
We are in talks with our Chinese friends on opening the Chinese market to our pork and poultry producers. So, there are positive aspects in this situation.
But this is not a normal situation, of course. All of these restrictions do not produce anything good, and we should work towards a global economy that functions without these restrictions.
To be continued.