The Hindu : International : Putin pledges push to economy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 08, 2004

International

International

Putin pledges push to economy

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, MAY 7. Russia's youthful President, Vladimir Putin, took the oath for a second term on Friday with a pledge to impart new dynamics to the country's already impressive economic growth and ensure people's well being.

Eight weeks after his landslide re-election, Mr. Putin was sworn in at a glamorous Kremlin ceremony attended by some 1,700 guests and crowned with a march past by presidential guards and a 30-gun salute.

The former Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, was present on the occasion to hear a barely disguised jab at the legacy he had left to his hand-picked successor four years ago.

"The past years have not been easy for all of us. To put it bluntly, they were a time of grave trials," Mr. Putin said in his inaugural address. "Back in 2000, too many problems seemed to have no solution at all."

During his first term, Mr. Putin has pulled the country away from "the looming threat of disintegration" and presided over a 30-per cent GDP growth. This earned Mr. Putin over 70 per cent of the vote in the March poll. Setting a distinctly nationalist tone to his inaugural address, Mr. Putin stressed that Russia has bounced back, relying on its own strength, rather than foreign credits that Mr. Yeltsin had solicited and squandered to no effect.

"Standing together, we have achieved a lot, and we have done it ourselves only," the President said. Russia today is "a country that has bolstered is positions in the world and learned to uphold its legitimate interests by peaceful means in the fast-changing world."

Mr. Putin (51), has vowed to set the country on a path of still faster growth in his second and last term allowed by the Russian Constitution. Last year, he called for doubling the gross domestic product by 2010 and promised administrative reforms to streamline the bureaucracy.

"The main task for the coming four years is to translate the potential accumulated so far into new energy for development in order to achieve a quantum jump in the quality of life and an effective, tangible improvement in the well being of our people," Mr. Putin said in his address.

He called for the development of a "mature civil society" in a country that "has never had any democracy," as he admitted in a recent interview.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International