A presidential decree on the use of privatization vouchers to purchase land, municipal property and apartments will go into effect by the end of the month, according to a top government official.


Pyotr Mostovoi, deputy chairman of the State Property Committee, which is running the Russian government's privatization drive, said in an interview that the new inclusions will reinforce the government's message to citizens to avoid parting with their vouchers too quickly.


He also said that the government was considering holding a lottery in February or March to encourage citizens to hold onto their checks.


The government began distributing vouchers to its 150 million citizens last week amid widespread criticism from opposition leaders, parliamentary deputies and some economists.


Under the current privatization legislation, citizens can use their vouchers to invest in any of nearly 7, 000 large, state-owned enterprises, in private investment funds, or sell the vouchers for cash.


As a precursor to allowing the sale of land for vouchers. President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree Friday that will allow experimental land sale in the Ramenskoye district outside of Moscow.


The decree authorizes officials to begin auctioning off plots of land by the end of the year to any citizen living in the region or in the capital, with the condition that the land be used for building a home.


Mostovoi said that Yeltsin would also issue a decree on the privatization of the oil and energy industries "by the end of the year".


Critics say that average citizens, wary of investing in Russia's crumbling industry and suspicious of investment-fund brokers, will probably sell their vouchers for the nominal value of 10, 000 rubles.


This will leave the best part of state-owned property to "the mafia, official nomenklatura and Western businessmen to snap up the country's major property holdings", according to a statement published last week by the


Civil Society parliamentary faction.


The argument is that average Russians, unable to keep up with high prices, will sell off their vouchers for cash in order to purchase staple items, instead of waiting to invest in state-owned property with the checks, which they can do starting Dec. 1.


"We are concerned about that, and we are making an appeal to people's common sense", said Mostovoi, 42. "We are saying that you should not hurry and sell your voucher until you see what is available".


"People who have common sense are hearing the message, people who don't are not", he said.


Mostovoi defended the government's much-maligned publicity campaign on how to use the vouchers, which critics say has left the public confused and ill-informed.


"People are doing everything they can to find out", he said. "There is newspaper, there is TV, there is radio".


Mostovoi also defended the use of a sum -10, 000 rubles, or $32 at the current exchange rate - that has been assailed as "not even enough to buy a pair of boots".


"These checks are securities", he said. "The nominal value is relevant only in dividing up stock into shares, but the sale price will be defined by the market".


As for those who do sell the vouchers, Mostovoi said the sale of a certain number of vouchers was a "normal and unavoidable phenomenon".


The decree introducing these additions is likely to be opposed by some factions of parliament.


The inclusion of municipal property, which is currently privatized by auction to the highest bidder, might also prove difficult.


The final decision of whether to allow the privatization of municipal property, which includes profitable stores and service outlets, would rest with local authorities, Mostovoi said.


As for oil and energy privatization, Mostovoi said that these industries were never intended to be left off the list.


"There will only be certain limitations on the percent of private ownership, and a slightly slower timetable", he said.