Valentina Matvienko: After establishing Ministry of Construction, Housing and Municipal Economy we do not need an agency responsible for national affairs

On November 7 after a field session of the Council on issues of intellectual property, Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly Valentina Matvienko said that once the decision about establishing Ministry of Construction, Architecture, Housing and Municipal Economy was made, there is no need to create a special Ministry responsible for national affairs.

“I believe that such multi-ethnic state as Russia needs an agency to deal with development of state policy in the sphere of inter-ethnic relations, monitoring of the situation in regions, and preparation of reports about regions and the whole country. Professionals, experts and people able to generate ideas connected with state policy should work there,” Valentina Matvienko said.

She reminded that earlier the Ministry of regional development was responsible for fulfillment of these tasks. However, among many functions assigned to the ministry, inter-ethnic relations and national policy were not priority ones. Thus, the decision was made about reforming Ministry of regional development and some functions connected with housing and municipal economy were passed on to the new ministry.

Valentina Matvienko emphasized that was the right decision and now Ministry of regional development is responsible only for social and economic development of regions, state programmes and national policy.