Press release, 30.06.2014

Grigory Yavlinsky, economist and author of the “Land-Houses-Roads” programme believes that individual housing construction based on the law “On the Patrimonial Estates” initiated by the Communist Party will not become mass-scale. (Ed. The programme envisages boosting of domestic demand via mass-scale housing construction by population on the plots of land granted to people for free by the state, the state should also provide all the necessary infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water and gas to these plots of land. This would allow to provide residential housing to 14 million families and create 2 million jobs.)

One of the reasons is that the Communists abolished in their draft law provision of the necessary infrastructure – roads, electricity, water and gas – which should be made at the expense of public funds, as offered by Yavlinsky in his programme in 2009.

“Without this, most of population will not be able to afford obtain land in private property,” he said. “Therefore, this project targets primarily a wealthy part of the population, people who can use their own funds for construction of costly infrastructure, as well as rent-seekers who receiving large plots of land free of charge will further lease them.”

Yavlinsky also stressed that, “proceeding from the text of the draft law, we can see that it is targeted at satisfaction of land interests of a small part of the most wealthy citizens, rather than at provision of conditions so that all citizens of Russia could receive free land for construction of residential housing.”

According to Yavlnsky, “at present the state does not has anymore the necessary resources to ensure adequate infrastructure for citizens who build houses on their land.” Very significant costs to the Olympics (214 billion roubles, according to official figures and 1.5 trillion roubles according to unofficial estimates), Crimea (over 100 billion roubles) and aggravation of the situation in Ukraine deprived Russia’s economy of such capabilities, he said.

Yavlinsky also drew attention to the statement made by the Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov who on June 25 said that the Treasury would not be able to return to private pension funds 243 billion roubles accumulated as pensions in 2014. Yavlinsky also added that further statements by the State Duma, the government, Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev and Anton Siluanov that there had been no grounds to worry, seemed unconvincing.

“Thus, the country has been losing the possibilities to address the most important problems”, Yavlinsky concluded.