Agenda: instructions following the Digital Industry of Industrial Russia (CIPR 2022) conference; changes in the support mechanism for regional industrial development programmes; the use of digital technology in agriculture; the development of regional transport systems; and the nationwide online voting for improvement projects.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks
Good afternoon, colleagues.
I will start with measures to develop the real sector of the economy. The President has repeatedly spoken about the importance of acquiring new expertise and concentrating resources on industry. The Digital Industry of Industrial Russia (CIPR 2022) conference that took place in Nizhny Novgorod last Friday was devoted to these issues.
The participants had a productive discussion with the leaders of industries amid the sanction restrictions on supplying critical goods. Our joint work at the conference produced specific instructions that will promote industrial development with reliance on the latest generation IT. It is necessary to promptly launch the implementation of these solutions.
I will briefly mention some of them. We are to create industrial expertise centres that will work on replacing foreign solutions in key economic branches. The Ministry of Digital Development will prepare proposals on their personnel in cooperation with other departments, primarily the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
It is necessary to unite contractors and developers in creating and introducing new digital products and involve our leading companies in this process. Head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev will have to work on this issue until the middle of July. He will have to look at the personnel of these centres for developing technological solutions and determine the order of their work.
The Government Commission on Digital Development must discuss proposals to replace sectoral and systemic foreign solutions with Russian software products and software and hardware systems, and present a list of the approved projects.
It is also necessary to take additional measures to promote the introduction of new Russian IT, both hardware and software systems. The Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Industry and Trade need to draft these proposals by 1 August.
Supporting industrial businesses as a whole is a Government priority. I am referring to both simple and hi-tech businesses from small to backbone companies, particularly in the face of external sanctions.
No measures, even the most effective ones, will lead to the needed result unless the problem of accessibility in all regions of the Russian Federation is resolved. State assistance needs to reach any business that needs it.
The Government will adjust the mechanism of support for regional industrial development programmes. Starting next year, federal budget funds will be allocated for these purposes as subsidies. This will amount to over 3 billion roubles under the Industrial Development and Improving Industrial Competitiveness Government programme.
With these subsidies, businesses will be able to reduce the costs of hooking up to the utility infrastructure by 80 percent, as in the case of an advance payment under a lease contract, and it will be possible to save up to 50 percent of the cost while buying new equipment.
The Russian regions will be able to use these subsidies to increase the authorised capital of regional industrial development funds.
The decision we have taken will make it possible to increase production capacity renovation rates in the regions. It will also incentivise investment activity and enhance the competitiveness of Russian businesses.
Now let’s talk about agriculture. In keeping with the President’s instructions, the Government has been working to develop the Russian agro-industrial sector based on information technologies that are up to modern standards.
We will allocate over 900 million roubles from the budget to increase the use of digital technology in agriculture. This is necessary to make the agriculture ministry’s data available in real time to all individual, corporate and government stakeholders.
This year, to increase the accuracy of harvest predictions, we are planning to introduce artificial intelligence technology in eight pilot regions: the Voronezh, Kursk, Bryansk, Tula, Nizhni Novgorod and Moscow regions, as well as the Perm Territory and Tatarstan. In the first stage, this will apply to seven main crops: winter and summer wheat, sunflower, corn, sugar beets, buckwheat, and potatoes.
The agricultural sector’s federal property register will also start operating to help bring together odd bits of information, analyse it and take well-considered decisions on this basis. We will also digitalise rural household registers, many of them kept since the 1930s only on paper. This will make it possible to pool production data on a single information platform. As a result, the state food security monitoring and forecasting system will become more accurate. We hope this will allow the millions of people in the agro-industrial sector to make use of these new opportunities as soon as this year.
Another important topic is roads. At a recent meeting, the President drew attention to the need to develop regional transport systems, because people use such roads every day. The Government continues to assist regions in implementing these significant infrastructure projects. The standard of living of people in cities and villages directly depends on the quality and pace of such work. Today we will distribute federal budget funds for the construction of roads in seven regions: the republics of Mordovia and Tatarstan, the Astrakhan, Kaliningrad, Leningrad and Penza regions, as well as St Petersburg. The Government will additionally allocate over 8.3 billion roubles for these purposes. We hope that this will make it possible to complete the road construction and repairs in these regions so that people see tangible results as soon as possible.
The Government consistently creates conditions for a comfortable urban environment to make life easier for our citizens. We are carrying out this work, including using the national development goals set by the President.
Last year, a unified federal platform for online voting was launched. With its help, Russians express their opinion on which parks, embankments, garden squares and other public areas should undergo improvements first of all. The platform has worked well, and people actively participate in this work.
This year, the second nationwide vote took place. Almost 5,000 sites were put up for public discussion. And more than 10.5 million people managed to cast their vote. This is 11 percent more than last year.
The voting activity shows the growing interest of our citizens in improving the public space around them. We support this attitude. As the President said, a truly modern living environment is created in those places where residents are actively involved in improvement work. Locals can better see where a playground or sports field or other facility should go. We expect that public interest in solving the issues of urban development will grow.
