OREANDA-NEWS. January 22, 2013. Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:  Dmitry Medvedev: Good afternoon, everyone! Today’s meeting includes representatives of all the parliamentary parties. I would like to remind you that when the State Duma appointed me Prime Minister, I promised to hold such working meetings, and not only ones for listening to reports, as is stipulated by the Constitution and the law. I  also meant to hold regular meetings with the leaders of the parliamentary parties, but I believe that we need to communicate in a somewhat expanded format and discuss the agenda that we all are concerned about. It has been over six months since the new Government began its activities and now it is time to talk about our life and our plans. But before we do that, I would like to add that the law-making activities of the Government and the State Duma over the past year have been very productive. Over a half of laws signed by the President in 2012 were developed and submitted to the parliament by the Government. I would like to thank you all for your work.

The spring session will also bring with it hard work. We have plans to implement, they are outlined in the Presidential Address and in the key legislative acts effective in our country, but what is most important is that the lives and well-being of our huge population depend on them, that's a huge number of people.

Today, I would like to discuss certain issues, but if you would like to, we can also touch upon issues that you consider important. The first issue I would like to address is the draft law on the federal system of contracts for the purchase of goods, work and services, which will replace the infamous Law No. 94, which needed to be improved. In fact, the law affects almost all sections of society. Experience has shown that the law has many flaws, but this is not only about the flaws. We have constantly tried to fix its faults, but the law itself does not defend the customer from the non-fulfilment of contract terms and does not allow the work carried out to be evaluated. This is its weak spot, which created opportunities for corruption and all kinds of money laundering like so-called “pocket” firms, tenders for unnecessary services or tenders where the winner was known from the outset. I hope that this situation will be considerably remedied. 

The draft law proposed by the Government passed its first reading in June 2012, with more than 800 amendments made and taken into account.