Deputy Prime Minister Aleksei Kudrin on creating a positive business climate in Russia

Abstract

Executive Overview Since 2000, Aleksei Leonidovich Kudrin has held two key positions in the Russian government simultaneously–Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. As deputy prime minister, Mr. Kudrin oversees forecasting of economic and social development, government economic policy and regulation, entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized businesses, antimonopoly activities, taxation, foreign trade, and relations with financial institutions in other countries and international organizations. The federal ministries reporting directly to him include the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the Ministry of Taxation, the Antimonopoly and Entrepreneurship Support Ministry, the State Statistics Committee, and the Federal Bankruptcy and Economic Sanation Service. As finance minister, Mr. Kudrin is in charge of formulating and executing the government's financial and fiscal policy, as well as preparing and implementing the budget. From 1997 to 2000, Mr. Kudrin was first deputy minister of finance, and previously served as deputy head of the presidential administration and head of the internal control department. In 1995–96, he was first deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and chairman of the Committee for Economics and Finance. In 1994–95, he was deputy mayor in Anatoly Sobchak's administration, and was in charge of city finances and chairman of the financial committee. Mr. Kudrin began his political career in St. Petersburg in 1990 as deputy chairman of the Committee for Economic Reform, and later became deputy chairman of the Economic Development Committee and head of the Finance Department. Earlier, Mr. Kudrin worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Social and Economic Problems of the Soviet Academy of Science in Leningrad [now St. Petersburg]. Mr. Kudrin was born in Dobel, Latvia, in 1960. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a degree in economics in 1983, and earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Academy of Science's Institute of Economics in Moscow.