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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Medvedev, I know that you had some proposed changes to the Government’s organisational structure. We already discussed them earlier. Now, as I understand it, you have the final proposals ready. Please, go ahead.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev: Yes, Mr President. Following on from our earlier discussions, I wanted to present to you now a number of proposals for optimising the Government’s organisational structure. 

The Government is not a rigid structure fixed in place, but has to change. A number of your recent executive orders establish new bodies responsible for economic and social tasks in particular regions. These new bodies are the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East, the Ministry for Crimean Affairs, and the Ministry for North Caucasus Affairs.

This has essentially shifted our efforts to a region-based management principle, and this is producing results. Perhaps these results are still relatively few as yet, but what we are doing makes sense. A ministry responsible for construction was also established.

This means that a large share of the Regional Development Ministry’s powers have been distributed among the newly established ministries. In this respect, the Government thinks that it does not make sense to keep the Regional Development Ministry running, and we have therefore drafted a proposal for its abolition, with its remaining functions to be distributed among the other federal executive authorities and ministries. I want to submit this proposal for your approval. 

Some of the [Regional Development Ministry’s] functions would go to the Economic Development Ministry, some to the Construction Ministry, and some to the Culture Ministry. In other words, nothing is lost in the process, but we can optimise the organisational structure and perhaps even reduce the number of surplus management personnel. This is a continual task.

I have two other proposals. They concern organisations that were established a while back: [state defence procurement agencies] Rosoboronzakaz and Rosoboronpostavka. 

They have fulfilled particular tasks and carried out particular work over the eight years of their activity, but today, the situation is that Rosoboronzakaz is part of the Government and under its responsibility, while Rosoboronpostavka stayed part of the Defence Ministry, as was historically the case. Given this situation, we propose abolishing both agencies so as to have the Defence Ministry concentrate fully on supplies of military goods, and as far as the oversight functions go, this work will be carried out by the Trade and Industry Ministry, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, and, within the scope of its powers, by the Accounts Chamber. In other words, abolishing the two agencies will not create any problems and will at the same time allow us to optimise the Government structure in terms of these tasks.

Vladimir Putin: Good. These are proposals that we discussed earlier. If you think that it makes sense to do things this way, let’s go ahead with it.

Dmitry Medvedev: Ok. In that case, we are ready to present the draft executive orders for signing.

Vladimir Putin: We also discussed issues concerning the defence industry.

Dmitry Medvedev: We are presenting this matter separately.

Vladimir Putin: Ok.

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