By Andrei Skvarksy.
Anton Siluanov was a low-profile career civil servant before being named last week as Russian interim finance minister to replace Alexei Kudrin, to whom he had been a deputy for several years.
Although Siluanov is not expected to continue beyond the lifetime of this government, there is an expectation as he tries to fill the large shoes of Kudrin.
As well as the Finance Ministry, 44-year-old Siluanov will also take over Kudrin’s position in the IMF, World Bank and the Eurasian Anticrisis economic fund.
The minister, whose initial moves have included a promise not to raise taxes in the foreseeable future, was in charge of the 83 regional budgets during his lieutenancy to Kudrin.
Siluanov was born in Moscow and is a graduate of the Moscow Finance Institute. Weeks after receiving his qualifications in 1985, he joined the finance ministry of Russia, then a Soviet republic, and has stayed there ever since with the exception of a national service stint from 1987 to 1989.
The bald-pated bureaucrat has been through about a dozen jobs during his finance ministry career, but has also combined his ministry duties with membership of the VTB supervisory board and the boards of directors of Rosselkhozbank and Rossiyskiy Kredit Bank.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, he headed the government’s anti-crisis commission, managing the state bailout of struggling enterprises.
His main challenges will be fending off approaches by rival ministries eager to tap funds in an election cycle to appease an electorate growing increasingly disenchanted with the political process. On top of that, Europe’s financial crisis and a slowdown in the US economy may yet send Russia’s economy in a tailspin just like three years ago.
Bond investors, however, have already voted with the feet by cutting exposure to Russian quasi sovereign debt, citing Kudrin’s ouster.
Siluanov is known to be one of the wealthiest people at the ministry. His 2010 incomes declaration puts his earnings for that year at 8.9m rubles ($277,000) compared with Kudrin’s 7.9m ($245,000). He and his wife together own more real estate than what any of the other top Finance Ministry figures stated in their declarations for last year.
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