The agenda: additional funding for the industrial mortgage programme, reimbursing Crimea for its assistance to help disaster victims, preparations for the spring fieldwork.
Government meeting
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks.
Dmitry Patrushev’s report on preparations for the 2024 spring fieldwork.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
Before we begin this Government meeting, I would like to say a few words about a document that has been signed. It aims to develop national production facilities, and it will help launch new and promising projects in Russia’s most diverse regions and accomplish the President’s objective to strengthen our technological sovereignty.
Industrial mortgage is an effective tool for supporting businesses in this area. The programme took off in 2022 at the initiative of the President. I would like to remind you that it allows businesses to obtain loans of up to 500 million roubles for a term of up to seven years. They can use these loans for purchasing, building, modernising or reconstructing industrial shops. Businesses pay 5 percent annual interest on these loans, and technological companies pay only 3 percent interest.
The Government allocated an additional 1 billion roubles for financing the programme. There are plans to provide subsidies worth 2.3 billion roubles throughout 2024.
We hope this measure will help businesses expand production facilities and create thousands of new jobs.
Let’s move on to today’s agenda.
We will review the issue of supporting the regions affected by emergencies.
In late 2023, Crimea faced adverse weather conditions, including gale-force winds, storms and heavy rains that flooded residential buildings. This natural disaster affected about 300,000 people.
At that time, the President instructed us to sort things out and see what assistance was needed.
The Government and the republic’s leaders have completed this work. We have also facilitated lump-sum payments to compensate for the loss of essential property.
Our resolution allowed affected residents to rebuild their households and to start renovating damaged housing.
Today, we will provide the region with about 3.26 billion roubles for these purposes, partly to reimburse it for regional budget spending.
Our next important issue deals with preparations for spring sowing.
The President emphasised the importance of supporting agro-industrial enterprises, so they can continue to expand their capabilities and offer high-quality, affordable and healthy produce. The Government persistently implements a range of measures for expanding the sector, including subsidised loans for agricultural businesses. This assistance helps farmers produce larger harvests of wheat, rice, buckwheat and sunflower.
We expanded our funding this year to maintain our pace. We will spend an extra 20 billion roubles on subsidies, including for fieldwork.
This funding will allow businesses to purchase the essentials for a successful spring sowing campaign, including farming machinery, mineral fertilisers, fuel and seeds.
Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev will report on the pace of this work in greater detail. Mr Patrushev, you have the floor.
Dmitry Patrushev: Mr Mishustin, colleagues.
The 2024 nationwide spring sowing campaign began on 11–20 February. As always, southern Russian and north Caucasus farmers were the first to start. It is now underway in 23 regions.
Today, winter crops have been treated with fertiliser on an area of 7.2 million hectares. We have sown spring crops on an area of about 1 million hectares. This exceeds the 2023 rates two times over.
Overall, cropland will reach 84.5 million hectares throughout 2024, up 300,000 hectares on 2023. The breakdown, coordinated with the regions, includes 20 million hectares under winter crops, 56 million hectares under spring crops and over 8 million hectares under perennial grasses.
Colleagues, we prepared for the spring sowing campaign without any problems. We address all the issues with the regions, including at our command centre. The members held their regular meeting this week, and they noted no outstanding problems.
Regarding material and technical resources, we have stockpiled the needed seed volumes nationwide.
At the same time, we continue our strategic long-term effort to prioritise national selection methods. We are developing our research facilities and stipulating support and regulation measures. Our regions have plans to sow pre-set seed volumes. We see that businesses are becoming more interested in Russian-bred produce, and we will continue to move in this direction.
About 100 percent of all farming equipment is ready to operate on the fields nationwide. Various support measures have helped renew the farming machinery fleet. These measures are quite effective, and we will continue to implement them.
This includes a plan we worked out together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to stimulate the purchase of Russian-made equipment. Under this plan, farmers are entitled to 15 percent discounts. Last year, we tested this mechanism for the first time and included tractors alone in the plan. This year, we have added harvesters and other self-propelled vehicles. We hope farmers will take delivery of over 3,000 pieces of equipment under this programme.
To ensure regular fuel deliveries during seasonal fieldwork, we have coordinated essential delivery volumes from March through November with the Ministry of Energy. So far, we are not seeing any substantial problem with petroleum, oil and lubricants, but we are keeping an eye on the situation.
We are providing all crop protection means as planned. Our inter-departmental command centre continues to monitor the situation on the fertiliser market.
All earlier regulatory measures remain in force until late May. We are ready to extend them because they provide farmers with the necessary fertiliser volumes at acceptable prices.
Farmers have purchased 1.4 million tonnes of fertiliser since early 2024, and we believe that total purchases will reach 5.4 million tonnes this year, exceeding 2023 levels.
Colleagues, I would like to dwell briefly on financial support for seasonal fieldwork. We have kept all the main support measures, including seed purchase subsidies, as well as support for buying petroleum, oil and lubricants, machinery and crop protection insecticides. This includes agrarian insurance subsidies and measures under a federal project to expand the vegetable-growing and potato-growing sectors. I would like to recall that the owners of personal holdings can also obtain these subsidies. Mr Mishustin, this includes the soft loans that you mentioned. I would like to note that we continue to implement this mechanism, despite the high benchmark interest rate. Earlier this year, the Government allocated 20 billion roubles for subsidising new loans, including 7 billion for subsidised short-term loans during the sowing campaign.
I would like to add that grain producers have received an additional 10 billion roubles this year for maintaining financial stability.
The regions are currently distributing this sum. We expect it to support grain-growers against the backdrop of record-breaking harvests over the last two years.
To expedite the implementation of state support measures, we continue to use the mechanism of seasonal pre-financing so that the farmers could get all the required financial resources in time for spring sowing.
Colleagues, the sowing campaign has therefore commenced in accordance with average long-term deadlines and is proceeding as planned. We expect our country to achieve strong harvests in every crop category throughout 2024, and that we will attain food security parameters.
This concludes my report. This slide shows the draft protocol decision on this issue. Mr Mishustin, I am asking you to support the document.
Mikhail Mishustin: Mr Patrushev.
You know very well that it is necessary to closely monitor all the issues linked with the sowing campaign. This includes the provision of funding to farmers –from the allocation of essential funding to the general budgetary managers, to federal executive agencies and organisations involved in this process. Of course, you need to address the entire range of issues – from fuel prices to all the details of the sowing materials needed. You are well aware of this.
As in previous years, it is very important to ensure a substantial harvest. Our citizens expect this from us mainly because they need an assortment of high-quality domestic food products. We also need to expand our export potential, as you showed us last year.
