OREANDA-NEWS. Transcript: Dmitry Medvedev: Good afternoon, colleagues.
I'll start with the Budget Message, which has just been presented by the President. Clearly, the message includes several major goals, especially given the difficult situation on the global markets and our own economic problems.

It's clear – we heard this today as well – that we need to focus on important priority projects, because we don’t have enough money to fund all of them: in particular, the modernisation of the economy and the promotion of innovation-based activities and attracting investment. Of course, we need a system-based approach to spending. Accordingly, the federal executive authorities should be in charge of this work in accordance with their respective responsibilities, and Deputy Prime Ministers should coordinate it.

We are creating a programme-based budget, which we also discussed today. It is imperative that we accelerate the development of the long-term fiscal strategy and decide on ways to address pension issues, because this is an important topic. You've heard the rest, as well, so let’s get to work.

Let’s move on to the agenda of our meeting. In 2018, for the first time, we will be hosting the FIFA World Cup. This is an important event that has lots of ins and outs, but by then we will already have the Olympic Games and the World Student Games under our belt. Today we will be considering the preparation programme for these competitions, with the participation of 32 national teams and up to 1 million foreign guests, meaning the World Cup will have significantly more spectators than the Olympics. TV broadcasts will be watched by at least a third of the planet’s population.

Once again, the World Cup will be held after the World Summer Student Games, the Olympic and the Paralympic Games. We will be tackling various issues in the course of our preparations. In fact, this isn’t bad at all, because we will be refining the administrative techniques and resolving technical and logistical problems in the process. This also applies to compliance with international construction standards and providing various services, as well as building a barrier-free environment and maintaining environmental balance. I hope that it will also help us improve our security. This experience should be carefully considered when implementing the football project.