The agenda: Start of the third national online vote for locations to be improved; register of priority projects promoting technological sovereignty; expanding the possibilities for concluding a SPIC.
Excerpts from the transcript:
Mikhail Mishustin: Good afternoon, colleagues. Following the President’s instruction, we continue to use the mechanism created for the direct participation of citizens in creating a convenient urban environment.
On Saturday, 15 April, the third national online vote for locations to be improved began. For the next six weeks people across the country will be able to choose locations that need to be improved the most. These can include parks, garden squares, embankments, streets, squares, courtyards and public spaces. Voters can also choose design projects for the already selected areas. Residents will decide how their towns or districts should be improved, how they should look. This is the feedback that the President constantly tells us about.
Almost 11 million people took part in the last two votes. Now it will be held in over 1,500 municipalities, where the locals will choose from more than 5,000 locations. The list has been compiled with consideration for the proposals of our people.
We hope that many will show interest and express their opinion on how to improve the urban environment. This can be done, as in previous years, on a special online platform.
It is important to provide the widest possible information about the choices. This is a good opportunity to make your own city or village more comfortable and more convenient for living.
Mr Khusnullin, please follow this voting carefully and report to me separately how everything goes.
Another task set by the President is to strengthen technological sovereignty and ensure the outstripping growth of the processing industry. We have discussed in detail the new approaches in this area and the first results in various sectors during a number of strategic sessions. And just the other day in Tyumen, we discussed this at two enterprises. The Government will continue to develop systematic solutions to help domestic enterprises start producing the necessary components. A number of effective instruments are already available including industrial mortgages and preferential lease rates. Following the President’s instructions, we will add another support measure.
To do this, we will combine specific projects in a special record that contribute to the structural adaptation of the economy, primarily those eliminating a low level of localisation and critical dependence on suppliers and buyers from unfriendly states. The Government approved the list of types of production and services. It includes, among other things, medicines, equipment, unmanned aerial and automotive equipment, and software development and testing. It is these areas that will determine Russia’s market leadership in the coming years, I would even say, in the coming decades.
These projects will be able to count on a special approach from banks when approving loans, reduced interest rates and the more active participation of our development institutions. This will provide up to 10 trillion roubles of additional funding to develop promising industries, and will make it possible to replace the supply of scarce materials, components and equipment, reorient our transport and logistics network and flows, and produce competitive products primarily at domestic companies. And one more thing – about helping businesses that are ready to invest in the development of modern technologies in our country.
The President set the task of providing a comprehensive and large-scale support system for promising research and design work and developments, and this is especially important for manufacturing critical products. Such conditions are formed, among other things, under special investment contracts 2.0, which make it possible to quickly launch the production of high-tech goods.
Our businesspeople are very interested in this. These are primarily projects in agriculture. Today, everything that is required for food security should be created in Russia. The Government is expanding the possibilities for concluding SPIC 2.0 contracts, and we are expanding the list of Russian scientific organisations that provide investors with an assessment of the technologies used, their relevance and competitiveness.
Now it will include 10 more organisations engaged in food and agricultural engineering, as well as biotechnology. Their expertise will help accelerate the release of products in demand in the industry like oils, various bio-additives, industrial acids, glycerin, veterinary vaccines, and biodegradable bioplastic for packaging. We hope that these measures will promote the active introduction of high-tech solutions in agribusiness, which will result in an increase in food production both for the Russian market and for export. The attractiveness of investments in our agribusiness will also increase, which means that more new jobs will appear in our regions.