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The meeting took place in videoconference format.

Mr Medvedev instructed the presidential envoys in the federal districts and the Regional Development Ministry to keep close watch on tariff levels for housing and utilities services throughout the country.

The President heard reports from the Regional Development Minister and governors in the regions that have had problems with tariff hikes, and then instructed them to go to municipalities over the start of January and talk with people to check on what actual changes to housing and utilities tariffs have taken place.

Mr Medvedev also said that the law on state corporations’ activities must be passed faster, emphasising that these corporations should operate strictly under state supervision and on a transparent basis with clear aims and results. This process will be helped by reorganising some of these corporations’ assets on a joint-stock basis, which should also be speeded up.

The President called for tough penalties, right up to lengthy prison terms, for those who use the state procurement system to line their own pockets. Consistent effort must continue to put this sector in order, Mr Medvedev said. 

The state procurement system encompasses 10 million contracts, and many of them have been concluded with violations, with the result that dishonest civil servants and businesspeople misappropriate huge sums of money, the President said.

Acting on the presidential instructions, the Prosecutor’s Office carried out checks in all parts of the country, and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika reported that 27,000 breaches of the law have been revealed since the start of 2010, administrative sanctions have been taken against more than 7,700 officials, and more than 100 criminal cases have been opened.

Presidential instructions concerned, in particular, purchase of overpriced medical tomography scanners in the regions. Mr Medvedev said that development of Russia’s medical equipment production sector would help to resolve the problem of overpriced state procurement contracts.

The President said that he continues to keep the issue of housing provision for Great Patriotic War veterans under his personal control.

Mr Medvedev issued a number of instructions to the presidential envoys, the Government, and the regional heads following the videoconference.

The Government, in particular, has been instructed to send to the State Duma a draft law on the purchase of goods, works and services by state corporations (companies), natural monopolies, and housing and utilities sector enterprises, and also to make the necessary amendments to the Civil Code and the Federal Law On Joint-Stock Companies.

Mr Medvedev also ordered his envoys in the federal districts and the head of the Rosmonitoring national monitoring service to monitor how effectively housing and utilities sector organisations are using the money allocated for the sector’s modernisation and development.

During the meeting, the President saw a demonstration of an electronic system that will make it possible for him to follow the implementation of his instructions on-line. The system makes it possible to carry out quality evaluation of instructions’ implementation.