Russian PM Putin today in Naberezhniye announced Russia’s plan to encourage sales of Russian made vehicles to help its domestic troubled car makers. Under the proposed plan, the Russian government wants its people to only purchase domestic cars, and would fully cover the costs to ship domestic cars across Russia to make them readily accessible. Under the plan, the government would also subsidize loans on cars less than USD $13,000. The plan has been criticized as the plan is too expensive and it simply doesn’t make economic sense to move vehicles across all of Russia. There are also concerns about the heavy government involvement in people’s lives. According to a recent report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, less than 50% of cars sold in Russia were domestically made. Recently, the Russian government also introduced prohibitive tariffs on imported cars which have resulted in many protests. Aggregately, car sales in Russia are expected to drop by as much as almost 50% in 2009 because of the economic crisis and high unemployment.