With ordinary Russians grumbling about the sharp rise in food prices, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a populist move on Friday, announcing that he and almost everyone who works for him would take a 10 percent pay cut.
The reduction, which takes effect May 1, extends to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his entire Cabinet, as well as the nation’s prosecutor general and most Kremlin officials, the state media service said.
Russia is facing severe economic and financial problems stemming from a steep drop in world prices for oil — the nation’s main export. Its situation has been made worse by Western sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine and the slumping value of the ruble.
Inflation accelerated to a 16.7 percent annual rate last month, the highest level since March 2002, the government said earlier this week.
Prices for staple foods and vegetables like carrots and cabbages rose more than 22 percent in January alone, and sugar now costs 68 percent more than it did a year ago.
In addition, Moscow has banned imports of a wide variety of meat, dairy and other products from Western nations, in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The nation also faces acute credit problems. Russian companies that can no longer borrow from Western banks because of sanctions are lining up for handouts from the government to help pay off about US$100 billion in debts.
Against that backdrop, pay cuts at the top are meant to be seen as a gesture toward sharing the pain. The Russian parliament’s upper house agreed earlier this week to accept a 10 percent cut in members’ salaries if the rest of the government did the same, and the lower house, the Duma, is expected to follow suit.
Whether Putin and his colleagues would actually feel the cut is another matter.
The president said at a news conference in December last year that he was not really aware of how much he was paid, and that he just forwards his pay envelope to the bank.
Official Web sites put his salary at 3.7 million rubles in 2013, the latest year for which data is available. At the time, that would have been equivalent to about US$90,000, but the ruble’s decline since then makes it now worth just US$62,000. Figures for last year are due next month.
Many Kremlin watchers doubt that he lives on that salary alone.
There have long been widespread suspicions that Putin has acquired and stashed away a fortune over his 15 years at the head of one of the world’s major oil exporters, not to mention a nation where many people have used official positions and connections to obtain spectacular wealth.
Some reports have suggested that Putin might now be worth more than US$40 billion, although there has been little, if any, hard evidence to go by.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is