Russian Government Announces 20 Percent Reduction in Number of Bureaucrats

I've already commented on Cuba's surprising announcement to slash the number of government workers. And I've complained about the federal workforce expanding in the United States. This is not what one would expect when comparing policy developments in a communist nation and a (supposedly) capitalist nation. Well, Russia wisely is following the Cuban approach on this issue (I never thought I would type those words!) and plans to get rid of 100,000 bureaucrats over the next three years.

Russia will cut its army of bureaucrats by more than 100,000 within the next three years, saving 43 billion rubles ($1.5 billion), Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Monday. "We assume more than 100,000 federal state civil jobs will be cut within three years. The government has already included a schedule for cutting the number of federal civil servants in the draft budget for the next three years and coordinated it with ministries and agencies," Kudrin told President Dmitry Medvedev, who in June ordered a 20 percent cut in the number of bureaucrats. Under the government plan, ministries and agencies will have to sack five percent of their staff in 2011 and 2012, and 10 percent in 2013. ...In the last three years, the number of bureaucrats in the federal government had increased by nearly 20,000, in regional governments by 60,000 and at municipalities by 50,000, he said.