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At the Government’s first meeting after a large-scale reshuffle, the President formulated the main tasks in which the Finance Ministry and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry should play a major role.

Vladimir Putin said that, with the country’s economic structure and growth rates still unsatisfactory, the main task was to create mechanisms for ensuring qualitative growth: a tangible increase in the country’s GDP, reduction in the scale of poverty, higher living standards and a better quality of life.

According to Vladimir Putin, these were top-priority tasks the success of which directly depended on the reduction of state interference in the economy, its diversification, optimisation of state assets and reform of the budget system and the system of benefits.

The President focused on tasks in the tax sphere, primarily, the unified social tax, mineral tax and value-added tax (VAT), and also the redistribution of tax sources between the levels of authority within a reform of inter-budgetary relations. The President gave relevant instructions to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.

The participants also discussed in detail the modernisation of the financial and banking sectors.