国际英语新闻：Putin vows to improve people's livelihood, fight extremists

MOSCOW, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spent over four hours talking to the fellow citizens during an annual national question-and-answer session live on Thursday.

According to the session's data center, some 2 million questions were poured to the head of the government, ranging from fighting extremism and drug-trafficking to Putin's unexpected karaoke performance and health of his pets.

As last year's session, domestic issues still played a dominant role in the whole live show.

FOCUS ON DOMESTIC ISSUES

In the show, Putin fielded 90 questions, 31 of which were selected by himself.

The majority of the questions were connected to wages rise, improvement of housing conditions, and Russia's population conditions.

Putin stressed Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) would return to pre-crisis levels by the first half of 2012.

Compared with the sharp drop of 7.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009, this year would witness a 3.8 percent increase of GDP, he added, saying he was "satisfied."

Meanwhile, Putin said the industrial output will rise up 8.5 to 8.6 percent this year, after last year's decline of 8 percent.

Putin said he is not ashamed for his work, noting that Russia in 2010 enjoyed the lowest inflation rate in recent history of 8.5 percent.

"This is a historic minimum," the prime minister said.

Putin also talked about the significant drop agricultural output, saying the output will slump 9.9 percent due to the summer drought.

This year Russia had harvested about 60.5 million tons of grain compared with 98 million tons in 2009, he added.

In addition, Putin also vowed to improve people's living conditions, controlling traffic jam, gradually decreasing import of pharmaceutical products, and combating several other domestic problems.