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Part 4 Speaking during his annual televised Q&A session with the public,Russian Prime Minster Vladimir Putin The session lasted for about three hours. The Russian Prime Minister and the leader of the most popular Russian political party, United Russia, covered a variety of issues ranging from the global financial crisis to relations with Europe and the United States to purely domestic topics. В прямом эфире телеканалов «Россия» и «Вести», радиостанций «Маяк» и «Радио России» Владимир Путин Председатель Правительства и лидер партии «Единая Россия» ответил на вопросы, поступившие в общественные приемные Председателя партии, заданные по телефону, sms, а также через сайт программы.Трансляция идет из Гостиного двора в Москве. ERNEST MACKEVICIUS: Mr Putin, you mentioned the aid being rendered by the state to some other areas of the economy. But as I looked through the questions that arrived at our website, I see that not everybody understands these measures. People are under the impression that large banks mainly receive the money. Here is one question on the subject: "Are the big banks worth helping? The banks take money from the state at 6% per annum, but lend at 25%, including to small and medium-sized businesses. Perhaps, it would be better to help the industry?" And in general people want to know if the Reserve Fund has enough cash to live through the crisis. VLADIMIR PUTIN: First about the banks. Banks are the circulation system of any economy. We should remember the negative consequences of previous years or the negative results of meltdowns in previous years, for example in 1998, when the whole banking system collapsed. We cannot, of course, allow this to happen again, because behind the banks are not only industrial businesses, behind them are millions of savers - the ordinary people of Russia, who want banking institutions to function properly and have enough cash to meet people's interests. This is why we are channelling vast resources into the banking sector. We have already reported this figure - about 5 trillion roubles. The Central Bank is allocating all kinds of resources. Long-term resources are already on the way, as are medium-term resources (although long-term resources are in short supply, and we will discuss that later) and short-term resources. These resources are all available and are being injected into the banking system. Of course, we worked above all with banks that would not squander state money, or rather your money, citizens of Russia, the money contributed by taxpayers. What are these banks? We call them "system-forming" banks. These are banks with state ownership: Sberbank, VTB (Vneshtorgbank), and Gazprombank. Partly, it is VEB (bank for foreign economic relations): but properly speaking, it is a separate institution, one through which we carry out a number of other functions. But of course what we see now is that these efforts to support only the banking sector are not enough, because today's crisis is largely unique. The global economy has not met with a crisis of this size before. So today we decided to support the industry directly through the banking system, and directly through the banking sector. I will tell you now what I mean by directly. To support the industry we allocated 175 billion roubles. These are long-term loans which must be directed to production or service-based businesses. At the same time, we will demand from the banks that they report to us on three sectors to which they are going to lend money. What are these sectors? These are farming, the defence industry and small and medium-sized businesses, as well as a long list of enterprises which we recommend. My starting point is that this might not be enough. Currently, we are taking a close look at how the banking system operates. Their problem today is not that of liquidity, it is one of trust - between the banks themselves and the banks and the production and service-based businesses. Of course, we will be insisting that state money reaches the end user. But this too might not be enough, and then we will need to use other tools. What tools? For example, joining directly the capital of large companies where the state and the taxpayer will ultimately benefit; capital of enterprises that are the core of the Russian economy. We are not ruling out that such tools could be applied on a wide scale. Трансляция канала ВЕСТИ