President Boris Yeltsin has issued a decree aimed at streamlining his government in order to promote economic reform, but the ensuing shake-ups are unlikely to have any immediate effect.


Details of the decree became public over the weekend, when Itar-Tass announced that two ministries


- for industry and for architecture


- were to be abolished and numerous governmental committees dissolved.


Yeltsin's decision dissolved 20 former ministries, committees and commissions, while reorganizing 30, apparently compensating for the fact that their number had ballooned over the past year.


But the edict also created 10 new state committees, including one for industry.


Vladimir Shumeiko, the first deputy prime minister who was in charge of the restructuring, said over the weekend that the new federal structure would be "less bulky and more suited to solving the problems of the economy".


"By removing the ministry committees we will improve the vertical structure of government, which will improve the performance of the economy on the level of production", Shumeiko said in an interview published in Izvestia.


He said that in its first year as a sovereign government since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia's federal bureaucracy had increased to 137 bodies from 44, many of which had overlapping functions Shumeiko cited as an example two organizations for the social defense of military servicemen, one under the auspices of the president and another under his cabinet.


"Were servicemen's lives made any better by that? " he asked.


Bureaucratic reform and the renaming of state agencies has a long tradition in the history of Russian government, however, and seldom have the changes proved more than a formality.


In the current decree, for example, the Currency Control Inspectorate of the Russian government will be replaced by the Russian Federal Currency Service.


Likewise, the Committee for Medical Industry of the Ministry of Health was changed into a new department in the ministry.


A commentator for Nezavisimaya Gazeta described some of the changes as "simply comical" and said he found it "very hard indeed to figure out how exactly each of the new measures will facilitate the progress of reform".


When the decree was first announced last week, the dissolution of the Indsutry Ministry was seen as a victory for radical reformers. They had for some time been calling for the removal of Alexander Titkin, the old-style minister who favors a very gradual approach to the privatization of industry.


But the ministry's reorganization into a state committee may not mean much of a reduction in Titkin's influence.


Describing the difference between the old Industry Ministry and the new state committee, Shumeiko said the new body would develop policy "without getting involved in the activity" of industries.


Nezavisimaya Gazeta had a different opinion of the change: "Far from being cancelled, the Ministry for Industry will continue to thrive".