"The state, the government and employers are together to think about safety guarantees, and come at shared approaches to it," he said while in Kremlin conference with Aman Tuleyev, Kemerovo regional governor. The coal-rich area in West Siberia's south is known as the Kuznetsk Coal Basin, or Kuzbas.
The governor asked the President to exempt a part of mine proprietors' profits from taxes to spend extra revenues on leading-edge equipment purchases.
"We can certainly grant more fiscal privileges-but you did not flinch before closing certain mines. You made the industry profitable. Proprietors are making profit, and can spend its part on technical updating," President Putin replied to that.
"It is our duty at all levels to monitor compliance with safety rules. We can only regret that things sometimes don't go the way papers have it," he remarked.
The administrative reform allows much quicker to consider mining license applications, said Mr. Tuleyev. The eleven mines newly opened in his region offer a million tonnes of coal, or even two.
When the federal President asked him about farming in the Kuzbas, the governor said plots allotted to new mines had sizeably cut the sown area. Pioneer farming know-how came in to make up for the loss.
"We expect this grain harvest to make a million and two hundred tonnes," he reported, adding that the Kuzbas presently has Russia's lowest bread prices.
Miners have met the entire national demand for coal this year. 153 million tonnes has been extracted for domestic needs plus fifty million for export to Turkey, the UK, Germany and Poland.
20,000 Kuzbas households will have new accommodations this year on Programme Decrepit House. To implement this programme, the region is entitled to 200 million rouble federal allocations-an unprecedented sum. Programme financing goes on thefifty-fifty pattern. If federal and regional allocations amount to 500 million roubles each, the Kuzbas will fully cope with the endeavour within four years, said the governor.
