President Vladimir Putin: Yury Petrovich, I know that you are currently carrying out checks on how mineral resource users are complying with the conditions of license agreements. How is this work going?
Yury Trutnyev: There are 16,000 licenses in this country. A considerable number of them were accorded over four years without the state making any substantial demands on mineral resource users. There are neither deadlines for starting production at deposits, nor set production rates. In other words, there is nothing of any substance for the state to control in return for the rights accorded.
Moreover, a large number of licenses were subsequently amended during the course of work in a way that, we can say, eliminated the most substantial demands. Thus, if we were to begin operations at the deposits for which licenses have already been issued but which are not currently in operation, this would give us a twenty percent increase to our current reserves and a corresponding increase in production volume in a certain number of years. In other words, we would make this gain without having to explore new deposits but by simply beginning operations at those deposits where operations are currently frozen. We have already started this work and for the time being we have begun with a dozen and a half of the biggest deposits belonging to the biggest companies. Various companies are concerned. The general demand is that within a month the license agreements must be revised and presented for approval with clear indication of when production at the deposits begins and a breakdown of production volumes by year.
Vladimir Putin: The most important thing here is that everyone should follow the same set of rules and there should be no selective application of these rules to individual players in this process, that is, to individual mineral resource users. Thank you.