President Vladimir Putin opened a meeting with governors of the Siberian Federal District on Wednesday. This is not the first meeting he is chairing in Tomsk. He held a conference on the reform of the housing and communal economy here in 2001. Now the governors are going to discuss the draft version of the special federal programme “Siberia,” Tomsk Governor Viktor Kress, the host of the meeting, told Itar-Tass. According to his information, the leaders of all the 16 regions, integrated in the Siberian Federal District, will attend the meeting.
“I hope we shall be able to discuss ways of developing natural resources of Siberia, including an iron ore deposit in the Tomsk Region, as well as problems hampering the implementation of the priority national projects in the Siberian regions,” he said.
Problems of the housing and communal sector will also be mentioned at the meeting. According to Kress, “the authorities should create conditions for the development of the enterprises, which provide communal services.” The lifting of the value-added tax for housing and communal enterprises could be one of the ways to it. Kress is positive this could curb the growth of tariffs.
The leaders of the Republic of Altai, the Republic of Buryatia, the Republic of Tuva, the Republic of Khakassia, the governors of the Altai and Krasnoyarsk Territories, of the Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tomsk and Chita Regions, the leaders of the Taimyr, Ust-Orda Buryat and Evenki Autonomous Areas will attend the meeting. Aside from it, the finance minister, the minister of economic development and trade, the minister of transport, the minister of natural resources, the minister of industry and energy, the minister of regional development, the official representative of the President in the Siberian Federal District, the president and vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the heads of Transneft and of Russian Railways were invited to take part in the discussion.
Putin came to Tomsk to take part in the Russian-German consultations, which will begin on Wednesday night.