Putin's centralisation swells Russian bureaucracy

MOSCOW, Apr 12 (Reuters) President Vladimir Putin's drive to centralise power swelled Russia's bloated bureaucracy by more than 10 per cent in 2005, official figures showed.

The Russian statistics agency's figures released today showed the proportion of public sector workers who take their orders directly from the Kremlin also rose, to 52.5 per cent.

The number of state employees, excluding the FSB internal security service, the armed forces and other security structures rose by 143,000 over the year to 1.46 million, or one percent of the population.

Since Putin was elected president in 2000, his government has sought to regain control over the levers of power lost in the chaotic 1990s.

He has scrapped direct elections for all top state posts except the president, gained control over the media and cracked down on the most powerful businessmen to create what Russians call the ''vertical of power''.

''The vertical of power is reflected in people,'' said a front-page headline in business daily Kommersant on the figures.

The rise was concentrated in the executive branch of government, where the number of workers in Moscow rose by 20 per cent and in the regions by 29 percent.

The increases effectively cancel out a Kremlin drive launched in 1995 by Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin to trim central government.

''The figures clearly show that the tendency in cutting the number of people in the state apparatus came to a halt in 2002,'' said Kommersant, above a graphic of the number rising from around one million in 1995 to the current figure.

Ordinary Russians complain bureaucrats are inefficient and corrupt, and that even the most simple requests can require days of queuing or large bribes. Reform drives are frequently announced, but rarely seem to produce results.

Corruption watchdog Transparency International ranks Russia joint 126th on its list of cleanest countries, along with Sierra Leone, Niger and Albania.

REUTERS KD ND1256