Agenda: Ways to expand spending opportunities by restructuring budget loans, through Russia’s fishing fleet development, and the list of measures as part of forest and climate projects.
Mikhail Mishustin's opening remarks:
Government meeting
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Before moving on to our agenda, I would like to mention a few decisions that have been made.
Primarily, they are aimed at creating favourable conditions for the development of Russia’s regions and improving Russians’ well-being and quality of life.
In 2021, the President initiated new tools for investment projects to promote the construction of housing and utility infrastructure, public transport upgrades, the construction of airport infrastructure, establishing manufacturing industries, as well as agriculture, energy, tourism and other important industries.
Over the past three years, those tools have enjoyed high demand. Applications from 70 regions to implement such investment projects have been approved. They included almost 700 private initiatives worth about 5 trillion roubles. We expect these projects to create about 200,000 additional jobs, which is very important.
To achieve all the stated goals, the plans call for more than 2,000 new and necessary infrastructure facilities worth over a quarter of a trillion roubles. These are mostly utility networks for residential buildings, industrial facilities, tourist clusters, and access roads and railways to new industrial facilities.
The regions will be able to finance their projects, in part or in full, using the existing mechanism for restructuring their budget loans – their debt under those loans will be reduced by the amount of taxes they have paid to the federal budget from the implementation of these investment projects.
To make this tool more effective, the Government has amended the rules for selecting the projects eligible for financing with the released funds.
In particular, the regions will now be allowed to use them for the construction of infrastructure at technology parks for high-tech companies. The procedure for selecting initiatives from residents of special economic zones will also be significantly simplified.
All this is very important for supporting new industrial facilities and creating domestic innovative products that people need.
The next issue for discussion is the fishing fleet upgrade.
In line with the President’s instructions, the Government continues to ensure technological sovereignty in this field, specifically focusing on domestic shipbuilding. The President emphasised that most of the maintenance operations such as equipping, re-equipping and repair must be performed domestically.
To encourage businesses to participate in this effort, the Government is applying the so-called keel quotas – a mechanism where a company’s access to harvesting aquatic biological resources is directly linked to its investment in domestic shipbuilding and fish processing. In the near future, by 1 March, Russian shipyards will deliver five ships for industry needs.
A corresponding Government resolution has been drafted, adjusting the requirements for investment projects in this area.
There is a clear list of required procedures – the ship’s hull has to be manufactured at a Russian shipyard, using domestic materials. All the design and technical specifications also have to be developed in Russia.
The new procedure will apply to vessels that have already been designed and are being built at our shipyards.
Many of these projects were launched more than two years ago, and included a considerable proportion of foreign-supplied components. In a number of cases, due to the external restrictions, the investors in some of the projects have changed. It is important that the new owners are able to carry out their plans, and what really matters to us is certainly the result, something we have repeatedly discussed.
As for the vessels, the construction of which has not yet begun, the current list of mandatory procedures remains in place for them. This includes installing equipment designed and manufactured in Russia on these ships.
We hope that these decisions will help expedite the upgrade of the fishing fleet and secure sufficient workload for our shipyards and related industries. And most importantly, they will increase the supply of aquatic biological resources to the domestic market.
The environment is another issue on the Government’s agenda today.
The President has repeatedly spoken about the need for a phased and thoughtful transition to green energy.
In many respects, our country is able to reduce greenhouse emissions thanks to the forests that absorb them. We will need to amend some of the current laws to improve our efforts in this area.
In line with the President’s instruction, amendments have been prepared that introduce the concept of forest and climate projects into the current regulations and determine the list of required measures. This includes fire safety measures, forest regrowth, control of forest pests and diseases, and a number of other mandatory steps to save our rich natural resources.
We have proposed several oversight measures to improve the supervision of the forestry complex. Companies will be required to provide the supervisory authorities with their project monitoring results in a timely manner and ensure that those results are entered into the Russian Registry of Carbon Units. Businesses will also be able to secure the rights to the relevant carbon units and conduct transactions with them.
These steps, this set of measures, will help reduce the burden on the environment and accelerate forest regrowth and enhance fire safety, and also provide greater stability for businesses that implement climate projects.
