President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Colleagues, preparations for the Winter Olympics are going full steam ahead and part of the work has already been completed. At the same time, I cannot help but notice that a number of organisational matters have not yet been settled as we hoped. There have also been a number of personnel decisions.
I hope that, now that appointments have been made and organisational decisions taken, the work will really go ahead in full and all the preparations will be carried out as planned and in accordance with the timetable that we set.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak: Large-scale construction of all the main sports facilities is already underway. Work is underway on five Olympic sports facilities, and construction of the others will begin by the end of the year. Work will begin in August on the central stadium and the speed skating centre, and construction of the ski jumps will start by the end of the year. Construction of the bobsleigh track will begin in 2010. All of this fits into the timetables, including the timetables for holding test competitions. The timetables for all of the Olympic facilities’ construction have received the International Olympic Committee’s approval. We are cooperating closely with the International Olympic Committee and its Expert Commission on all of the work. The recommendations made by the IOC experts, who have a lot of experience in building Olympic facilities and infrastructure are very valuable.
There are now 9,800 people from 11 different regions of the country working on the Olympic construction sites. There has been a lot of talk about big numbers of foreign workers at the sites, and in this respect I want to say…
Dmitry Medvedev: How many foreign workers are there in fact?
Dmitry Kozak: Of the 9,800 workers at the construction sites, the subcontractors have hired 229 people from various other countries.
Dmitry Medvedev: In other words, three percent of the total.
Dmitry Kozak: At the end of last year, the Russian Government instructed the governors of all of the countries’ regions to have the leading regional companies take part in the tenders for the construction of Olympic sites.
Dmitry Medvedev: There are various scare stories spread either simply out of ignorance, or quite openly by our competitors, including from other countries, saying that we are desperately behind schedule and won’t manage to get the work completed on time. What are your thoughts on this issue?
Dmitry Kozak: As far as construction of the main Olympic sites goes, we are ahead of schedule by a year compared to other recent Olympics. This was a conscious decision because we are starting from scratch, building practically the entire infrastructure for the games, and so we made this conscious decision to start construction work quite a lot earlier.
In London, Beijing, and Turin, construction of the Olympic sites began four years before the actual games. We have started quite a bit earlier, almost five years before the games. We can be absolutely confident that we will build everything we have planned. The only site we had some doubts about (to a less extent now) was the combined mountain and coastal railway cluster, but Russian Railways is working very effectively.
Dmitry Medvedev: It is good that you began earlier, but it would be best nonetheless not to slacken the pace. We know that as soon as one thing starts slowing down a little everything starts slowing down. You need to keep watch on the deadlines and keep watch on financial discipline too, because this is an enormous project, a project being carried out through public-private partnership, and everything has to be effective as possible. You need to keep watch on every rouble spent. This is your responsibility as deputy prime minister, and Mr Bolloyev’s responsibility as president of Olimpstroy. I ask you to monitor this situation and report regularly to me.
Mr Bolloyev, are there any problems at the moment, or is everything going ahead more or less smoothly?
President of State Corporation Olimpstroy Taimuraz Bolloyev: So far, all the work is going ahead in strict accordance with the timetable, which has been coordinated with everyone responsible for the project’s execution.
The Presidential Control Directorate took the initiative of setting up a working group to ensure efficient functioning of and coordination among all companies and organisations involved with preparations. The working group has representatives of the federal ministries, all of the federal control bodies, and the law enforcement agencies. We meet every month and draw up monthly plans of the work for the year, set out the tasks and the issues to examine.
We draw on consultancy resources both at home and abroad, and I think this is useful in our work.
Inspectors from the IOC come every six weeks or so, make their comments, and their reaction is a good indicator of how our work is going. We are working hard, making sure we meet the fixed deadlines, and so we can say (and this is the view of outside assessments) that there are no areas that are cause for concern.
As you rightly noted, this is an extremely complex project and quite unique in terms of the number of contractors involved and the complexity and diversity of the various tasks. Our target date is 2012, when national test games are planned to take place, and of course 2013, when international test competitions will take place.
So our target date is not 2014 but 2012.
Dmitry Medvedev: Very good. I want to bring to your attention one other matter that is often raised. When I talk with people involved in the construction at the middle and lower levels – I also have my contacts here – they say that there is a great number of approvals they need to obtain from the various agencies. Unfortunately, this often seems to be the case. Everyone wants to play at being the big boss, and because of this work is not going ahead as fast as we would like. We do have some time to spare, but we need to make sure that the various officials do not fritter it all away. Mr Kozak, as deputy prime minister, I ask you to keep watch on this and try to make sure that everyone respects the deadlines.
Dmitry Kozak: I want to say that one of the legacies of these Olympic Games will be improvements in our construction laws. It is true that our laws in this area require an enormous amount of permits and approvals. So far, we are sorting this all out one case at a time at the government level, but in general, we need to free business from this bureaucracy.
Dmitry Medvedev: Of course, all the more so as these are often absurd approvals, for which you can find any number of justifications, but which do absolutely nothing to improve the situation.
Dmitry Kozak: The Presidential Council for the Development of Physical Culture and Sport has set up a special working group on this matter. By autumn, they will draft general amendments to the current laws, based on the lessons learned from the construction of sites for the 2014 Olympics and for the APEC summit in Vladivostok in 2012. As it turns out, carrying out these projects under government aegis – the APEC summit and the Sochi Olympics – requires us to pass a separate law. We need to make an exception to the usual rules.
Dmitry Medvedev: Absolutely. APEC, the Olympics, and the World University Games too [in Kazan in 2013] are all major projects. Of course, the Olympics is the most complex, and APEC is also a rather complex project. Anyway, keep working. Once you have the draft laws ready, come and report, and we will hold a council meeting.
We have agreed then. Thank you very much.