Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev today summed up the year's results in the program 'Conversation with Dmitry Medvedev'.
Dmitry Medvedev said that the decline in Russia's economy and industrial production has stopped, and next year is going to be a year of growth.
"Our goal was to stop the decline in production, and in the economy. I can say that the economic decline and the decline in production were put on hold. We believe that next year there will be growth," the Russian prime minister said. "Relatively optimistic estimates of economic growth are somewhere around 1%"," he added.
He considers an assessment of 1% as very good, given the low growth of the world economy.
"The situation is really difficult, but let me remind you, recent years have not been easy for us.To speak about my assessments, I can say that the anti-crisis plan has proved its worth," the prime minister said. "It has allowed us to live through the most difficult period of this year," he noted, adding that the financial system was supported and the banking system is operating normally.
"We have managed to implement the most important measures, including indexing the insured component of pensions," Medvedev recalled.
"The anti-crisis plan has proved its worth," he concluded. "A separate question is whether it is necessary to prolong this plan in the future. Events in the very near future will show us how to act. The federal reserves will allow us to survive the difficulties, although they are finite," Medvedev noted.
Medvedev said that he is certain that the task of reequipping the Russian army will be 70% fulfilled by 2020.
"We once decided to increase defense spending. The decision was made practically five years ago. I believe that we did it absolutely right, because at that time, unfortunately, the condition of our military hardware and the Armed Forces in general was well below the mark," he said in an interview to Russia’s federal TV channels.
"We now have increased the spending up to the world level and we aim to reequip [the Armed Forces] with new armaments, new military hardware practically by 70% by 2020, and this task will be fulfilled," Medvedev stressed.
Medvedev hopes to shrink inflation to 6.4% in 2016 and believes that this scenario is completely realistic, because inflation has already stopped growing for several months.
He said that Russia has a plan B and even a plan C if the situation on the global oil market is unfavorable. "Currently, we are proceeding from a realistic scenario. But we would be bad managers if we did not have a plan B and even a plan C," Medvedev stated.
"The 13% tax that we introduced in 2000 is what we were able to fulfill completely. I mean we as a government that has existed since 2000," he stressed, adding that moving to a progressive tax is like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
According to Medvedev, agricultural growth in Russia will amount to 2.5-3% in 2015. "The situation is quite good, we will receive 2.5-3% growth in agriculture in this year, although we have a number of limitations, mainly financial," he said.
Dmitry Medvedev believes that the financial situation has stabilized, but the ruble is floating, depending on oil prices.
Commenting on the words of Finance Minister Anton Siluanov that the country may use reserves to cover the budget deficit, the Prime Minister said that it is any finance minister's job to dramatize the situation.
"Siluanov's words should incite a certain fear. But it is the job of the Minister of Finance to escalate the fear. Because if the Finance Ministry does not do it, nobody else will. The Ministry of Finance is the last resort," Medvedev said.
