Photos: Photos from the video
Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev joined a meeting with members of the government hosted by Vladimir Putin on Wednesday evening from a poultry complex outside Moscow. The president appreciated the official's know-how. “Communicating with us from the chicken coop is great! This enlivens our work,” Putin said to the loud clucking of chickens. At the same time, he considered it necessary to ask Patrushev why, considering the success of the industry, the price of chicken has increased so much – by 27% since the beginning of the year.
The minister said that the resort is dealing with this problem: there was a slight decrease in volumes in August, but until the end of the year the production of chicken meat will increase. “In principle, there are no prerequisites for a price increase,” assured Patrushev, without answering the question posed. He is said to have personally communicated with the poultry farmers. And “with a sense of their social responsibility” they have already started to reduce the prices of chickens.
Vladimir Putin responded by saying that poultry farmers are in business and interested in making a profit, but the government, when it saw that prices were rising, had to take measures and in particular “include the purchase of imports from our neighbors, from Belarus and Kazakhstan .” “We have to do it in time. Then such an increase (of prices) would not occur,” Putin noted. Patrushev said that decisions on imports have already been made: chicken meat comes from Belarus and Kazakhstan, which, he said, “will balance our market a little bit”. and made a decision. Earlier, the president criticized the government's slow response to rising gasoline prices.