Agenda: Expansion of the grant support programme for small and medium-sized businesses, support for technology parks specialising in electronics production, and a pilot project to create a single register of water bodies.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks
Meeting with deputy prime ministers on current issues
Report by Victoria Abramchenko on the experiment of establishing a single register of water bodies
Excerpts from the transcript:
Mikhail Mishustin: Good morning, colleagues.
The Government is expanding the scope of its grant support programme for small and medium-sized businesses. Now, organisations that run socially important projects in the new regions of our country – in the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics, as well as in Zaporozhye and Kherson regions – will be able to apply for participation in the programme.
Funds in the amount of up to 300,000 rubles will be given to companies that specialise in education, medicine, social services, culture, sports, as well as hotel business. A contest commission will select the applicants. The state aid will be allocated on the terms of co-financing. The grant recipients’ own resources should be no less than five percent in the total amount of investment. Grants can be used for rent and renovation of non-residential premises, re-equipment of cars for transporting people with limited mobility, disabled people, and purchase of raw materials and consumables for production.
This will provide additional support to small and medium-sized businesses and make it easier for them to launch and run existing projects, and therefore to be more active in solving tasks that are important to people, which will have a favourable impact on the standard of living in these constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
The next issue concerns the development of the supply-side economy, which the President spoke about. We will help technology parks that specialise in the production of electronics to reduce infrastructure costs.
Over 2.2 billion roubles will be allocated for this purpose over the next three years. The relevant resolution has been signed.
The applicants passed first the regional and then the federal selection. And four Russian constituent entities will receive the resources. The largest amount − 900 million roubles − will be allocated to the Vladimir Region. The funds will also be sent to Nizhny Novgorod Region, the Republic of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan.
The state support will allow management companies to partially reimburse the costs of the design, construction and modernisation of industrial infrastructure facilities, as well as the purchase of equipment and technological connection to utility networks.
Now about the decision that has been taken to improve the efficiency of Russia's water resources management. Their condition directly affects the economy and people’s quality of life.
Last week we had a detailed discussion about the need for systemic work in this direction at a meeting with the head of the Federal Agency for Water Resources. I would like to say that the Government is launching a study to establish a unified information resource. It will include the most detailed and reliable information on rivers, lakes, and groundwater, which will make it possible to develop common approaches to the careful treatment of our water resources, especially drinking water sources.
We will start with three pilot regions: the Tula Region, the Stavropol Territory and the Chechen Republic.
Ms Abramchenko, I would like you to report in more detail on how this work will be organised.
Viktoria Abramchenko: Mr Mishustin, colleagues.
Let me remind you that Russia ranks second in the world after Brazil in terms of fresh water reserves.
Climate change, intensive development of industry and agriculture, as well as the concentration of the bulk of the world population in water-deficient regions have made clean fresh water a strategic natural resource.
The issues of equitable water allocation on transboundary rivers are extremely acute for most countries.
Thus, the participants in the UN conference on water resources held in March confirmed that water is the most valuable global asset of mankind and the human right to safe drinking water should be available to all people.
System-wide measures are required for the effective management of our country’s water resources.
In particular, it is necessary to begin by exploring freshwater reserves, taking account of the quantity and quality as regards various sources.
At the federal level, there is currently no unified register of data about the sources of drinking or household water. Thus, the Federal Agency for Mineral Resources has been engaged in collecting and updating data about underground springs. The Federal Agency for Water Resources is responsible for surface water resources, and the Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare manages the data related to the quality of water.
This situation has resulted in an incomplete picture of the condition of water bodies and a lack of coordinated action when it comes to making decisions on the use of water resources, both at the federal and regional levels.
Thanks to your support, Mr Mishustin, it was decided to provide for a comprehensive aggregation of all data in a unified register of water bodies.
The creation of such a register will begin with a trial period, as you have already mentioned, in three pilot regions: the Stavropol Territory, the Chechen Republic and the Tula Region, in the period from October 2023 to October 2024.
The choice of these regions was dictated by the need to practice approaches related to integrating and analysing data for areas with different water supply conditions and depending on the regions’ readiness to digitalise the data.
Thus, the Tula Region mostly uses groundwater, the Stavropol Territory uses surface water, and the Chechen Republic uses both.
In addition, a big part of the Stavropol Territory is considered to be a water-deficient area, which requires a range of measures to organise a sustainable water supply.
A unified register of water bodies will help, first, to improve the environmental situation. This resource will facilitate comprehensive monitoring of the condition of the water bodies used as the sources of drinking and household water.
Second, it will allow the problems in the water-deficient regions to be dealt with. Due to increased efficiency in the use of water resources and the opening of new water wells, we will be able to increase the reserve of groundwater and reduce the deficit.
Third, we need to ensure control over the use of water bodies. The register data should become the basis for making decisions on allowing the use of water resources.
I will briefly report on the preparations for the trial period.
The Federal Agency for Mineral Resources and the Federal Agency for Water Resources have already created a prototype of the digital register using the Tula Region as an example; it contains information about almost 500 sources of drinking and household water.
By November 2024, following the results of the experiment, we plan to: determine the sources of illegal withdrawal of water for drinking and household purposes and sources where it is conducted in violation of the law; ensure that all reserved water sources are accounted for; determine sources to provide water to communities that do not yet have drinking water; keep a record of water wells with drinking and mineral water; in water-deficient regions, identify new sources of drinking water that can be used in the economy.
In November next year, the results of the trial period will be summarised and proposals developed for expanding it to all regions of Russia.
Mikhail Mishustin: Thank you, Ms Abramchenko.
The creation of an integrated database is indeed an important step which will help us improve the monitoring of the condition of water bodies and give us additional tools for prompt detection of all possible violations in the environmental area.
I would ask you to personally follow up on these issues.
