Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin suggested in the course of President Dmitriy Medvedev’s meeting with Ural Federal District’s Governors that a so-called infrastructure decade should be proclaimed and implemented in the country.

‘I believe that it behooves the government at the time of a crisis to focus its economic efforts on the total reconstruction of our road and transport infrastructure and the building industry. The infrastructure decade would be of paramount importance,’ he said.

The Governor also said that Chelyabinsk Region’s strategic development needed some powerful backup like the grand-scale project on the industrial development of the Urals’ north (known as the Polar Urals – The Industrial Urals). The implementation of this project would eliminate the shortage of raw materials for metallurgical enterprises as well as create demand for off-road vehicles, four-wheelers, bulldozers, metal, building materials, and cement.

Apart from this, Petr Sumin made some arguments in favor of crisis-defying action plan adopted by the President and the Russian Government. The Governor feels it’s essential to improve the inter-budgetary interaction, since all the budgets’ revenues have plummeted dramatically since October 2008. He also suggested that the regional budgets could be supported through being given up to 25% of VAT, the spokesperson for the Governor reports.