Russia PM, parliament consider price controls
Thursday August 27, 5:49 am Eastern Time
MOSCOW, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Russia's acting Prime
Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and parliament are mulling
extreme measures to halt the rouble's slide, including price
controls and a halt to convertibility, a key Chernomyrdin ally
said on Thursday.
Alexander Shokhin, head of Chernomydin's parliamentary party, said a document being drawn
up by the acting government and parliament's lower house, would contain ideas that once might
have seemed ''exotic,'' but were no longer so after the worsening of Russia's financial situation.
''The ideas contained in the economic project...which seem at first glance exotic, they are no
longer so, because the government of (former Prime Minister Sergei) Kiriyenko and the central
bank provoked these decisions,'' he said.
''The discussion includes specific administrative controls to the currency situation,'' he said.
''There will be demand for control on the currency market: administrative control, and perhaps
even a temporary closure of the market, with a canceling of internal convertability of the rouble.''
Other measures being mulled included setting prices to fight inflation or selling off all the central
bank's and the government's hard currency income to support the rouble. But he said the
government would try to strike a balance between urgently needed controls and the demands of
a free market.
''It is very important now not to go back to 1991, not to return to administrative-command
methods,'' he said. The main task was to find solutions that ''can save those benefits of the
market economy which can still be saved, and, on the other hand, protect the population,
banking system and the economy from the negative consequences of declaring the country
bankrupt.''
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