GORKI, September 17 (Itar-Tass) —— Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev proposed differentiated tax regimes for the Russian Far East and Eastern Siberia.
“If no special conditions are created, this programme will be basically futile,” Medvedev said at a meeting with Federation Council members on Monday, September 17.
“So we have to pluck up courage and create different tax and property regimes, which is not actually so easy and will cause serious disputes in the government and at other levels,” he said. “But in this case we have the chance to attract some additional funding,” he added.
The prime minister recalled that this approach had been used in pre-revolutionary Russia. At the same time, he admitted that people can hardly be enticed by a plot of land in the Far East nowadays.
“Our people, our business and our specialists should have more concrete and tangible advantages. We can’t develop the Far East and Eastern Siberia without creating special tax regimes,” he said.
Medvedev agreed that some economic ministries and agencies do not like this idea but this is one of the ways to breathe life into the new territories.
He also believes that one special ministry would not be enough to develop the Far East. “We must think about creating tools and institutes that will develop the Far East. There is the idea of creating a special company or fund that will accumulate money. I think we should go back to this idea,” Medvedev said.
“I think that a fund could be useful as a set of possibilities, as some monetary instrument,” he added.