MOSCOW, January 15 (RIA Novosti) – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced Wednesday that he will take personal control of a government drive to improve the business climate in Siberia and Russia’s Far East.
“Special conditions will be created for entrepreneurs running their own businesses [in Siberia or the Far East],” Medvedev told the annual Gaidar Economic Forum in Moscow. “I will be personally engaged with this.”
The Kremlin has made development of Russia’s remote regions in the east of the country a national priority in recent years. President Vladimir Putin created a Far East Development Ministry at the start of his third presidential term in 2012.
Medvedev said that he would supervise the application of financial incentives in Siberia and the Far East that include a five-year grace period for income, land and property taxes, and a reduction in insurance contributions.
The government approved an investment program last year that allocated a minimum of 100 billion rubles ($3.2 billion) annually to eastern Siberia and the Far East.
Russian government policy in the Far East in recent months has been marked by a rapid turnover of senior officials.
The new far east development minister was dismissed last year after criticism from Putin, who appointed another minister in September and created the new position of presidential envoy to the Far East.
The huge expanse of territory between Siberia and Russia’s Pacific coast suffers acutely from decaying infrastructure, geographic isolation, extreme weather, a declining population and uncompetitive enterprises left over from the era of Soviet central planning.
