[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] this weekend is full of live event coverage on the cspan network. With politics on cspan l. A. Times vessel of books on booktv and historians discuss the end of the civil war on American History tv. On cspan saturday morning beginning at 10 eastern 10 eastern life all day coverage of the New HampshireRepublican Party first in the nation leadership summit. Speakers include ted cruz scott walker, john kasich and rand paul your saturday at 1 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Booktv his life in the university of Southern California for the Los Angeles Times festival of books with panels on journalism and publishing, author callin programs throughout the day. Some of the authors you hear from include scott berg tava smiley and hugh hewitt. Live coverage of the l. A. Times festival of books continues sunday afternoon at 2 p. M. With panels on crime and u. S. History. At age 25 she was one of the wealthiest widows and the colones entering the revolution while in the mid 40s she was considered an enemy by the british. Who threaten to take her hostage. Later she would become our nations first first lady at age 57. Martha washington this sunday night at 8 p. M. Eastern on cspan2 radio series first ladies influence and image. As a complement to the series of cspans new book first ladies, president ial stories on the lives of 45 iconic american women providing lively stories of these fascinating women creating an illuminating come entertaining and inspiring read. Its available as a hardcover or an ebook through your favorite bookstore or online bookseller. Russian president Vladimir Putin answered questions on domestic and Foreign Policy in his annual callin program. More than 2 million questions were submitted and the entire event lasted four hours. Well show you an hour and half portion we talked about ukraine and iran. We are watching the russian president as getting ready for his annual q a address over 2 million questions posed to the russian president. He set records in the past by going on for over four hours before and as he gets enough for his annual q a address live, i will step aside and let the russian president man the helm from here. [speaking russian] translator hello colleagues, president of our calls and has been working for a week and, of course, well keep taking your calls and questions. Right now our operators are prepared for peak load of questions. You can call us at 88064040 or send a text to us if you call from abroad, use of the phone number you see on the screen right now. And during the last seven days we have set a record. As of now weve received more questions than last year by the time the show was over. So we have 2486,000 calls and text messages. This year we had an interesting novelty. You can send your nms your photo question to the president demonstrating your problem that are described in so many words. We also take video questions that you upload them to the moscow putin website. And again, we have sign language translation available. We will keep taking your questions until the end of this show come and send your questions and. Maybe the president will answer your question. Here in this study we have people of different professions from different segments of russian society, teachers, agricultural workers, rescue workers, military officers and they all have their question. Shall we start . Good morning. Mr. Putin, this year united face a lot of challenges. This was a time for you to make executive decisions and you were the only person who is capable of doing that. You have to take counter sanctions to get this situation with crimea, Fiscal Economic situations, outside pressure come and join personally get involved in these matters to which the outcome of this new . What would you say could you give us a list of successes and failures . That the traditional question. Well i knew that it would be coming anyway i would have to give the results of the year. So i jotted down some of the figures for myself, so just to give you some fresh data i will be happy to share them with you and the whole country. So you mentioned some of the results. We now have a reunification with crimea. We also worked on the difficult conditions. It was last year when we had the sochi Olympic Games that was a very successful sports event. That was what would happen last year. Also we faced for four partners and had an impact on our pace of growth. The ruble has been strengthening. The Stock Exchange is a growing inflation has stayed within certain limits. If you take last years real gdp grew by 0. 6 , flight growth is still the economy is growing. Manufacturing has been up for us. The output is 1. 7 and processing is 2. 4 . And Oil Production has been at a record high. Its 525 million tons. Rushes out one of its biggest targets in its history, 1. 53 million tons their agriculture has been growing 3. 7 growth. This year First Quarter has demonstrated some good results. We also have good figures across other categories petrochemical 4. 1, fertilizers 4. 2. Sure, we do have problems and so the cat has been down, thats the best signal and also direct investments were down 2. 5 but we still have good results in housing construction. I would like to highlight the record amount of construction. Again, among mother rush has never seen such figures and even the soviet union wasnt able to match the figures. 81 or even 82 million square meters. These are stunning figures. Also unemployment was up. It was 5. 3 in mid2014. Now it is my. 8, but still we kept the growth of unemployment at a certain limit. Inflation in the Consumer Sector was 11point for. Its not good. Of course, it hasnt Living Standard on our people. Inflation was down threefold. As for the real income of the people was down 1 while wages grew by 1. 3 . As you know we have indexed pensions. We have adjusted them to inflation, but still there is a lot of Economic Uncertainty and theres been a lot of capital outflow. We have to bear that in mind. Before they are for the questions on this issue, i would be happy to take them and we plot in more detail but despite fluctuations in the stock market demonstrating good growth. The their retail loans were up and the assets of the russian Banking System grew by 7 trillion rubles, so it is the first time they have bypassed a gdp of the country. So thats a good sign that the russian Banking System has been very stable. And its great that both legal entities and now we have the individuals that take their currency that they have purchased and now put it on deposits come and we see the number of deposits has grown 9. 4 . And we see the amount of deposits is still growing. This year its 1,945,000,000,000,000 rubles. And legal entities 19. 5 trillion rubles. Legal entities now have 26 trillion rubles in the deposits in russian banks. Now moving onto the budget we have 80. 5 deficit, but nevertheless its still not very much. So i think we will stay within 3. 7 the maximum. One of the positive results of 2014 was a positive demographic trend. We see that the birth rate was up and mortality was down and has been going across russian regions. This is a very good sign that it means we have the upward trend in the sentiment of the people that is positive. So thats the overview of the 2014. Mr. President the figures you just give us our most macroeconomic indicators and to look mostly positive. If we talk about the, persons experience judging by the questions we have received instantly sitting on our hotline, it does look as rosy and theres a great number of problems. Lets talk about economics first. Lets start with economic issues. I would like to start with a question that came after a recent article in a certain periodical. Person who was present at your meeting with businessmen said that you wanted businessmen that sanctions will not be lifted anytime soon. First of all did you actually say that . And if yes, what do you think the situation . [speaking russian] translator well, you didnt listen carefully to what i said. You miss some things that i said. I said positive things. I talk about macroeconomic factors that has critical importance for our growth but also said that of course, income has shrunk so that was due to inflation, 11. 4 . So i mentioned that. Now to sanctions. Indeed we had that meeting and i said its highly unlikely that sanctions will be lifted anytime soon. If they politicized issue. Some of our partners have had the strategic character and we want to restraint our growth. And i dont think it has any relation to the conflict in ukraine because you know come were doing everything we can to make agreements but our partners have not caught up. But the most important thing is for us to use some more sophisticated ways of management. And, of course, a lot depends on us domestically. I just mentioned inflation. I just mentioned real wages. But what is the reason for the decline . Of course there have a lot of pressure on the ruble. The ruble has depreciated. It depends on oil prices. Its well known unfortunately we have this economy that is too dependent on oil. Its difficult to change the situation. But over the past years we sell real wages are growing at a higher pace than productivity gains. This is something very important. So regardless of any sanctions an adjustment was imminent. Essential bank and the government actually you know took those sanctions as a helping hand so to speak. So if he could have said that, okay, these were the majors that we need for adjustment and we have to be careful of the sanctions. That adjustment took place. Its very important and the markets have responded to that. It means that our economy is getting healthier. It means we have the basic conditions for growth. Of course, sanctions have an impact. We will talk further about that with questions, talk about the issues but its not the most important thing. [speaking russian] translator still is it possible that the situation in russia we similar to that in iran with a decade of sanctions . [speaking russian] translator we dont have a policy in terms of energy that iran is conducting. So we have the Energy Sector which is much more marketbased than many other countries. So its not a very good comparison. Now, in terms of how long we should wait for the sanctions to be lifted, i would like to rephrase the question. We have to take advantage of the situation to reach new levels of development. Now look at the substitution. We are now forced to government these measures to implement measures. We have Hightech Industries in our economy and we will achieve their development faster than when we projected earlier. So look at agriculture especially after joining wto. We have made this sector healthier. Sure their groceries are more expensive. We have to wait for some time. You just have to be patient but the Agriculture Sector will surely happen. I know that agriculture producers are not very happy about the situation. I would like to say this question is to provide the government still provide support and, of course, we make sure that we have the agricultural and food safety. [speaking russian] translator what about the food embargo . We implement them because of sanctions. Russia is a strong nation and we can tolerate a lot of things but i know many foreigners think the main thing is that they dont leave sanctions because we are currently developing our own reduction and it took a real disaster. If you lived sanctions are do. We can talk about this later. People talk about your Big Press Conference six months ago and you said it will take two years to rebuild the economy. Would you digester forecast a little bit faster . [speaking russian] translator we see the ruble strengthening, the stock market is going. The ruble i think will take about two years, maybe faster. So this year the output will be down given all the factors internal and external. But evidently at the beginning of the we projected that the outputs will be significantly down. But this has not happened. According to the latest data if we take march data year on year, then the output is 99 of all we had last march. So the production has been stable. Of course, it depends on the interest rate. It depends on the policies by the government but so theres been flat growth but we still need to do everything to kickstart the economy. [speaking russian] translator but now he had the feeling that maybe shouldnt something differently . [speaking russian] translator breath you might always is something particularly. I think weve taken the right measures. [speaking russian] translator right, but this is a very important question to do we have enough strength and resources . [speaking russian] translator well, we have enough resources. We have enough human capital. We are proud of our talented people. We are very determined. They want to work hard that i talk to people about. I know the sentiment, especially in relation to sanctions. Im sure russians are very discerning, but the job of the president , this into a government, essential bank they can needs to pass this with minimal cuts. Can we do that . And yes. And its not just about patients. We have to take advantage of this time, and we can do it. [speaking russian] translator and what are the new threats that can emerge for our country this year . [speaking russian] translator there are so many threats, we cannot forecast but if we maintain the domestic political situation if we still have our society there are no threats that will be dangerous for us. [speaking russian] translator mr. President so what ascii but negative aspects. A situation of a crisis. Theres a set of measures taken by the government but frankly speaking come at this point we dont see how this is supposed to work and it seems like the primary strategy is to wait for oil prices to rebound. Went on the price start to go up we will have more money and this will take care of all our problems. [speaking russian] translator well this is an overly critical assessment. Certainly you must always criticize the government and president and the coverage of the russian regions. When you have criticism it makes you look at things with a fresh look. So you need some outsider opinion. Nevertheless a the plan to stabilize the Economic Situation is something that takes a lot of professional professionalism. I mean, we cannot waste our money. Certainly the government needed some time to understand what should be done and what kind of resources could be used. And the plan that i mentioned was adopted last december and its now rolled out. Where perhaps a steps could have been faster, too. Nevertheless the steps provided by this plan are well thought out and they reflect the state of our economy. I mean, that its a largescale blueprint, and we have 2. 3 trillion rubles earmarked for the implication of this plan. 900 billion rupee channel to support the russian Banking System. Thats the backbone of our economy. And, of course everyone criticized the central bank and the government but still these are the right steps. We just take a look back at the 2009 crisis. We also have 250 billion rubles that will be spent for the real sector of the economy. Of course, this will go to the banks and then the banks will help. Then we will send 100 billion rubles to support aviation aircraft construction. We will also have 82 billion to support employment 200 billion as guarantees for loans for certain projects and essential bank has a number of steps that are being implemented. Its critical to kickstart the economic growth. We are also adjusting pensions to inflation, and also we have a number of steps to take in taxation to ensure were going to talk about that during the session. In terms of the altar we have drafted a new support point in terms of internal logistics and transportation systems. We have a plan that is coming. The plan will be made zero for commuter traffic and also that with the cat 10 for passenger traffic. Aviation. So a whole range of issues which are being implemented so it is not fair to say there are no results. Sure, prices are up but not in all and we saw a decline in prices, not in all region but the average prices are down. The ruble has strengthened. So we cant see that come you cant say that nothing is being done. Thats not fair. Maybe the expectations were higher, but thats why im just urging everyone to be patient. You just have to find the right with the lord and the government has taken the right way forward. [speaking russian] translator but the ruble is turning or a different reason now. Because oil prices grew a little bit and they are stable now and then a matter of speculation because people convert their money to rubles just Interest Rates grew. [speaking russian] translator yes, oil prices are up. They see this link with oil prices. Translator mr. Boudin i would like the 1st question. We launched a firm two years ago. Were now the best young business project. But we have our problems with human capital. When young people graduate from university i dont know what kind of challenges our ahead. They dont know how they can help russia. So maybe the government can help us . And help young people to understand what kind of professions they want to work. [speaking in native tongue] translator so now it is confectionary. Train children. [speaking in native tongue] translator this is the best way to do things. Personal training especially in productive segments is one of our priorities. The processes are getting increasingly complex. We need a Skilled Workforce that. We work a lot in this area with Industry Associations representing sne representing bigger companies. Any number of measures together. Competencies in different areas working together to organize internships and so on and so forth. We cant proceed without that obviously. The government has a special program for that but you are also right. It is better to visit an earlier stage of their still in school. Yesterday i had a discussion with my colleagues and cities like moscow, almost 40 percent of young people want to go to the university hungry for knowledge. But this also indicates that we dont have this kind of Vocational Training in school. We will keep working on that together. And lets have another question. Finance minister. R