Page 17 - RusRPTOct19

2.10 Politics - misc
On 23 September, the newswires reported that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had signed the ratification of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Highlighting the importance of it for the people and the economy, Medvedev noted that work was currently being done on the Ecology project, but there was also the need to fulfill international requirements to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. Russia is due to work out the rules for adopting the Paris Agreement, with the document expected by 2020, according to the Ministry of Finance. Russia is the world’s fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases. As a base, Russia is likely to use the federal law that regulates emissions; a draft document is already available and it is due to be approved within a year. In addition, by the end of 2019 we anticipate the long-term development projects for low emissions by 2050. The targets in the Paris Agreement imply that the Russian Federation currently has in force legally-binding instruments aimed at limiting GHG emissions to, at most, 70-75% of 1990 levels by 2030, while the Ecology project focuses on Clean Air, Clean Country, Clean Water and Waste Management.
Putin’s close friend and judo partner, billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, is set to complete what is possibly one of the most profitable deals in the history of post-Soviet business. In 2008, Rotenberg (then not a widely- known figure), bought five construction companies for 8 billion rubles ($320 million) from state-owned gas giant Gazprom. He then merged the individual companies into a firm called Stroigazmontazh, which became Gazprom’s largest subcontractor. Now Rotenberg is selling the company back to Gazprom, but this time for 75 billion rubles ($1.1 billion). The sale, however, is mere kopecks compared to the size of the company and value it brought to Rotenberg. To calculate how much he has earned during the 11 years of Stroigazmontazh, consider the fact that between 2014 and 2018 alone, the firm was awarded government contracts worth 1.5 trillion rubles ($23 billion).
In 2020, Russia will begin implementing reforms in the field of public administration, which will lead to a large-scale reduction in the army of civil servants and an increase in the salaries of those remaining, said First Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko in an interview with RIA Novosti at the end of September. According to her, if this is not done, then the salaries of officials will be indexed only by the inflation level, since in order to increase wages to a competitive level, all civil servants will need an additional RUB100bn a year from the budget. The reduction of the state apparatus, as conceived by the Ministry of Finance, will take place in two stages. First,” automatically”: the number of central offices of federal executive bodies will be reduced by ten% next year, of territorial bodies by five%, and by 2021 this figure in the regions will reach 15%. At the second stage, structural improvement of the state apparatus is expected, which will lead to an additional reduction in the number. At this stage, the territorial bodies of ministries and departments are transformed into branches without the status of a legal entity and without units.
2.11 Polls & Sociology
According to August’s polls from Levada centre (1,608 respondents;
17 RUSSIA Country Report October 2019 ww.intellinews.com