Agenda: Support for backbone industrial and trade enterprises, rules for providing grants for the creation and development of agro-industrial technology parks, the university admission campaign.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks
Dmitry Chernyshenko’s report on the university admission campaign
Meeting with deputy prime ministers on current issues
Excerpts from the transcript:
Mikhail Mishustin: Good morning, colleagues,
The Government continues to provide support to the backbone enterprises in various sectors.
At the instruction of the President, a special loan programme was launched in March 2022. Under this programme, enterprises related to trade, the agro-industrial and construction sectors, transport and communications received concessional loans of up to 10 billion roubles in the period from March to August. Groups of companies received loans of up to 30 billion roubles. The interest rates were significantly below the market level.
We will allocate an additional 3 billion roubles from the budget to subsidise interest rates for over 100 industrial and trade organisations. This year, a total of around 25 billion roubles was allocated for this purpose. Businesses are using this money primarily to finance working capital, including for purchasing raw materials and paying salaries, and this, together with other system-wide measures, has allowed Russian enterprises to adapt to the changed environment, build new cooperative relations and logistics chains and enter promising markets.
The next issue relates to supporting the agro-industrial sector.
The President has repeatedly noted the importance of technological, scientific and food sovereignty, and it is crucial to provide the sector with everything necessary to ensure the success of our agriculture.
To that end, the Government has approved the rules of providing grants for the creation and development of agro-industrial technology parks. They will specialise in research and innovation, which includes biotechnologies, animal and plant breeding, the production of food and fodder supplements, plant protection products, and an entire range of other areas needed by agricultural producers.
These platforms will provide not only for research projects, but also for promptly launching small volume production, conducting experiments and processing agricultural products. The integrated space will host a lab complex, a pilot plant and other facilities.
We hope that this mechanism will become an effective measure to support the resident companies at agri-biotech parks and will help to provide our agricultural producers with Russian-made materials, which will guarantee the supply of quality and accessible food to the domestic market.
Another important issue: the nationwide university admission campaign began on 20 June. This year, the Government decided to increase the number of state-funded scholarships.
The President gave instructions to convert the most important state services to the electronic format so that they would function proactively, and the user would only need to send an application and the rest would be done automatically.
This year, school graduates can use the Online Admission service. With the government services website, they can send applications to over 1,000 higher learning institutions – 600 universities and almost 450 university branches. They can do it from anywhere in the country without visiting the admission commissions, submitting hard copies and waiting in queues. And, of course, it is much more convenient and user-friendly for prospective students.
Mr Chernyshenko, please tell us how the service works and how this year’s admission campaign is going.
Dmitry Chernyshenko: Mr Mishustin, colleagues.
The admission campaign started on 20 June in all Russian regions, including the new ones. It is going smoothly, without any serious issues.
As per your instruction, 626,000 state-funded spots were created, with over 36,000 of them at the universities of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. This year, the number of budget-funded openings increased by approximately 2,000. We have distributed over 12,000 openings for the specialisations that are priorities for the Russian economy, first, engineering.
For the convenience of prospective students and their parents, there are several ways to submit admission documents. It can be done in a traditional way, in person, by mail or the university’s information system, as well as the Online Admission service that is integrated with the public services website.
Mr Mishustin, as you said, this opportunity is available for more than 1,000 Russian universities. We are informing people about this service. The ad campaign for school graduates is running on all federal channels, on the internet, radio and outdoor advertising.
The super service is popular among school graduates because it has many advantages such as security, data processing speed (this high-load system can process up to 300 applications per second), the possibility to pick out several universities in one application, and it can create a future student’s profile without the need to manually input data. It only takes less than 5 minutes to file an application.
I would like to note that for instance, school leavers from remote rural areas can file applications with several universities at once without a personal visit, which is extremely convenient.
The total number of applicants at the moment is over 260,000, with more than 660,000 applications submitted since the start of the admission campaign. Of that number, 126,000 people used the super service to send in over 400,000 applications. That’s quite a lot.
Let me remind you that each applicant can apply to five universities if they want to.
The leading regions in terms of the number of applicants are, of course, Moscow and St Petersburg, followed by the Republic of Tatarstan and the Sverdlovsk and Rostov regions.
Systems confirming the applicant’s individual achievements, as well as their benefit status, are integrated with the super service. This year, participants in the special military operation and their children, as well as Heroes of Russia and persons awarded the Order of Courage, will be admitted to universities on preferential terms, under a separate quota.
A single contact centre, University Admissions, is open for all applicants and their parents. It works around the clock, 24/7; however, some issues may take some time to process.
The contact centre number is 8 800 100 2017.
In total, the contact centre has received about 8,000 requests as part of the current admission campaign, and all of them were processed. These are mostly issues related to the submission of documents, the procedure for accounting for individual achievements, as well as the enrollment of applicants from preferential categories within a special admission quota.
Based on the feedback received, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the universities can promptly make decisions on incoming applications. So the feedback works.
The admission campaign will last until 25 July, and the main stage of enrollment will be on 3-9 August.
We are monitoring the situation. We will promptly report to you.
Mikhail Mishustin: Thank you, Mr Chernyshenko.
Entering university is a very exciting time for graduates, and, of course, for their parents, who are worried about their children. It is important that people have all the necessary information, know how to proceed and what the deadlines are. Please make sure that the unified contact centre works smoothly.
Of course, the submission of documents via the public services website should be as simple, understandable and as user-friendly as possible. Keep track of the feedback from people and help them resolve any issues that arise.
