The agenda includes supporting easy-term mortgage programmes, providing subsidies to the regions for implementing the social contract programme, improving agriculture regulations, and subsidising maritime transport between the Kaliningrad Region and other regions.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
As per the President’s instructions, the Government continues to systematically support easy-term mortgages and allocates resources for sector-specific programmes, because the rate was reduced to 7% APR.
Today we will allocate additional funds in the amount of over 56 billion roubles.
Most of them will be used to finance the easy-term mortgage programme, with over 16.5 billion going to the family programme and almost 5 billion to the Far Eastern programme, which will give our citizens the chance to buy new houses and flats, and the construction industry will receive an additional incentive to move forward with its projects and to support demand for goods and services provided by related industries.
Today’s agenda focuses on helping families in financial straits, and the social contract is one proven mechanism to help them. In line with the President’s instructions, in the summer, we increased the maximum amount of lump-sum payments available under it. Up to 350,000 roubles are provided for starting a business and up to 200,000 for private subsidiary plots. In this regard, we will allocate over 3.5 billion roubles additionally to 64 regions so that they can fully meet their obligations to the people.
People should receive funds that are owed to them in a timely fashion. For many, the social contract provides a good opportunity to use state support to start getting paid and to improve their financial circumstances.
Today, we will also review a number of issues to create a more flexible regulatory framework for farmers.
As directed by the President, the Government continues efforts to put more agricultural land to use. Many of the land plots have not just been abandoned, but often haven’t even been properly registered in the past 30 years. They account for up to 25 percent of the total area in a number of Russian regions.
Amendments to the law, which should expedite their return to use, have been drafted. Work is underway to specify the procedure for recognising municipal ownership of unclaimed land plots, the owners of which no longer exercise their title to them. Local governments will be able to lease out such plots within the next two years. These decisions will help provide the entrepreneurs with tens of thousands of hectares of land for farming and incentivise business activity in Russian agriculture, the importance of which the President spoke about.
Amendments to legislation on agricultural cooperation have also been drafted and should simplify the procedure for including information about non-profit entities into the self-regulated organisations register. The paperwork can then be sent not only as a hard copy, but also in electronic form. There will also be an option to make corrections to submitted data.
The draft law sets the timeframe for entering non-profit entities into the state register, which is five business days. An extract from the register can also be obtained online.
We hope these amendments will save paperwork processing time for agribusinesses.
We will also look into ways to support individuals and corporations in the Kaliningrad Region. External sanctions imposed restrictions on the transit of certain goods across Lithuania and led to the expanded use of alternative sea routes. This issue was discussed in detail during the President’s visit to this westernmost region of our country, where he underscored the importance of making cargo transport convenient and economically viable. To keep prices in check and support local manufacturing companies, the Government has introduced a mechanism to subsidise maritime transport between the Kaliningrad Region and other regions. Over 1.3 billion roubles have been set aside towards this end this year. We expect a total of about 900,000 tonnes of cargo to be transported at reduced rates in both directions by late December. That includes petroleum and petroleum products, coal, cement, peat, building bricks, automobiles and furniture. It is important to act swiftly and to distribute relevant subsidies between Russian shipping companies as quickly as possible.
