Agenda: budget performance in the first six months of the year; a new relocation programme for residents of dilapidated housing; the Project Finance Factory; funding equipment for civil vessels; compensating small and medium-sized businesses for using the fast payment system; subsidies for purchasing containers for municipal solid waste sorting.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Before we discuss today’s agenda, I want to inform you about the latest decisions. We continue to relocate residents from dilapidated housing. The President set a task to expedite this work and the Government is launching a new programme. It will speed up the demolition and replacement of the buildings that have become uninhabitable in the five years prior to 1 January 2022. Our citizens will be able to move to comfortable and safer housing sooner.
We plan to allocate 22.5 billion roubles for this purpose this year. The nine regions that, by 1 May, fully completed relocation from the housing that had been found substandard as of early 2017, will be the first to receive the money. Thanks to this additional help, they will be able to upgrade around 500,000 sq m of old housing, improving the quality of life for more than 26,500 people.
Russian regions will receive 60 percent on average in co-financing from the federal budget, taking into consideration their own budget capacity. The financial support regulations have been approved.
It is important to develop the
infrastructure in areas where new buildings are being built. They must become
part of modern neighbourhoods where residents’ demands are fully met.
One more decision. On the President’s instructions, the Government is expanding the capacity of the Project Finance Factory. We will take 120 billion roubles from the National Wealth Fund on a repayable basis. We will channel these funds into large self-supporting projects that help re-launch the investment cycle in the economy. This primarily concerns the construction of power stations, industrial facilities and road infrastructure. The allocated funds will provide loans worth half a trillion roubles. This support will allow these companies to expedite development, increase the number of jobs and implement their plans to manufacture new products that are in demand at the market under today’s changing conditions.
Let’s turn to the agenda. Today, we will discuss the execution of the federal budget in the first six months of this year. Despite very strong outside pressure, on both individual companies and our economy in general, the overall results are decent. As the President of Russia noted, Russia is responding confidently to external challenges.
Revenue for the first half increased by almost a quarter compared to the same period last year and exceeded 14 trillion roubles. Costs amounted to a bit over 12.5 trillion roubles, having remained at the same level as the first half last year.
The external national debt decreased by one third. This is an important element in ensuring a balanced budget system.
These results were achieved with prompt actions and with the President’s support, including a large package of measures to assist the most vulnerable categories of people, small and medium businesses, backbone companies and many industries. Deadlines for paying taxes and other fees were postponed, and access to subsidised financing programmes was expanded. The situation in the labour market was stabilised, and the unemployment rate went down this summer.
We should mention separately that the cash management of the budget is generally following the schedule. This means that our regions, industries and people are promptly receiving the resources envisaged by the country’s main financial policy.
I would like to draw your attention to the following: regular budget resources and timely spending are essential for preserving macroeconomic stability and fulfilling all the social obligations to our people.
Now the next issue: the imposed sanctions have disrupted cooperation links in many industries, including shipbuilding that has faced difficulties with completing the construction of sea tankers, gas carriers, fishing, passenger and other vessels. These difficulties emerged primarily because our partners have failed to meet their commitments, and it was not possible to buy a wide range of parts abroad. We discussed this problem in detail at the meeting with the President on the development of shipbuilding. Following the President’s instructions, the Government will allocate 7 billion roubles this year for the engineering, production and introduction of the most important components in ship equipment.
This will allow the industry to prepare its own draft designs for 40 types of equipment like this, which will make it possible to complete the construction of over 100 vessels worth over 500 billion roubles in the next few years. It will take an additional 22 billion roubles to replace imported components with domestic counterparts.
It is important to make the most of these funds. The designing of each unit of equipment must always be followed by serial production and subsequent introduction. I would like to ask the Ministry of Industry to keep this effort under permanent control.
One more item on the agenda is support for entrepreneurs. On the President’s instructions, we will allocate an additional 800 million roubles to reimburse small and medium companies for commissions for using the fast payment system. Transactions will continue to remain almost free for restaurants, small shops, production companies and their customers.
This reimbursement instrument has been in force since July last year and through the end of the current year. Overall, the Government will allocate 1.8 billion roubles for these purposes. This instrument helps businesses save money on cashless transactions and concentrate their resources on further development, and allows people to pay for goods and services conveniently and quickly.
Now regarding environmental protection. In the next eight years, we must ensure the 100 percent separation of domestic waste. This is one of the national goals set by the President. The Government is consistently working to create the relevant platforms for this purpose. Today we will discuss the allocation of 1.5 billion roubles in subsidies to 43 regions of the Russian Federation. This money will be spent on the purchase of containers for solid household waste separate collection. We will send the bigger part of these funds – over 1.1 billion roubles – to the regions that need to expand the numbers of such waste collection containers and the rest to the regions that are just now creating this infrastructure. We hope the additional resources will help us develop recycling and make the transition to a cyclical economy, and most important, to create a responsible attitude towards preserving the environment.
