President Putin insistently called to determine such economic spheres that necessarily have to stay under government control-in particular, "certain infrastructural projects, industrial companies working on military contracts, and natural deposits of strategic purport for this country's future".
An instruction concerning the military-industrial complex came on a previous occasion, when a prospective transaction came under consideration for the German-based Siemens concern to purchase Russia's Silovye Mashiny Co.
"Such an instruction is available. My and several other ministries are together drafting respective legal amendments. In that, we proceed from the US legislative practice, which is tough and explicit enough, and from certain other countries' experience," Mr. Khristenko went on.
When our interviewer asked him about deadlines for drafting the amendments, the minister replied:
"We are not to make it a long job."
Required standards are out of the Russian legislation, meanwhile, and their absence is what specially worries nonresident investors, he added.
"What the President said means that we are to put an end to exclusive projects, with related decisions made by God knows who and God knows where. It is high time to shift to explicit, open and transparent arrangements," stressed the minister.
