Agenda: extending the pilot deployment of the customs monitoring system, federal budget execution in the first quarter of 2024, and the state of competition in Russia.
Government meeting
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
Before turning to our agenda, I would like to talk about a decision the Government has made.
The President has underscored the need to expand economic cooperation with friendly countries and to develop the necessary infrastructure for this. This is a complex task. One of its aspects is to reduce the administrative burden on bona fide businesses, including through the use of modern tools for compliance monitoring and oversight.
For this purpose, the Government has extended, until November 1, 2025, the pilot operation of the customs monitoring system and expanded the range of companies eligible to use the new mechanism. Under this mechanism, companies provide the Federal Customs Service with access to their information resources, enabling the agency to cut down on in-person inspections and, accordingly, reducing the costs that they entail.
The relevant Government resolution has been signed.
Last April, the new system became available to residents of industrial clusters, as well as to authorised economic operators – large manufacturing or trading companies that have a special status in Russia’s foreign economic activity.
Now back to today’s agenda. Today we will consider the report on the execution of the federal budget in the first quarter.
The national economy has been showing a consistent positive trend this year. In January-April, the gross domestic product gained 5.1 percent, according to preliminary estimates. I would like to note that this was achieved amid the record low unemployment, which stood at 2.6 percent in April.
In many respects, these trends – namely, the rising employer demand for specialists and investment growing by more than 14 percent in the first quarter – were due to the fiscal impulse. A number of projects have received most of the funding early this year, to give companies more opportunities to purchase necessary equipment and raw materials they need.
And, as a consequence, the steady operation of industry, trade, and the extractive industry generated revenues for the country’s budget. Non-oil and gas revenues grew by almost 45 percent compared to January-March last year.
It is important to continue to strictly adhere to the schedule of federal spending and earning. Executing the federal expenditures is even more important to ensure that all planned development projects, both social and industrial ones, are implemented on schedule.
The next issue concerns the state of competition on the domestic market. I would like to highlight a few key points.
Government meeting
Last year, the domestic economy continued to adapt to the changing global conditions and boost its resilience to sanctions and external shocks.
The timely legislative changes, some additional decisions and joint efforts of the Government and the Central Bank have helped alleviate many risks in the financial sector; support Russian businesses and build up the domestic market capabilities; stabilise the prices of a number of socially important goods; prevent shortages of such goods by restructuring logistics and value chains; and reduce the telecom physical infrastructure access fees.
A number of negative practices used by our largest online trading platforms have been abolished.
Almost every industry is now vigorously implementing the state import substitution programme, which is aimed at achieving sustainable economic sovereignty. Significant results have been achieved in the energy, aviation, food, shipbuilding, and fertiliser industries. Russian companies are effectively producing enough to fully meet our needs for grain, vegetable oil, fish, meat, potatoes, milk, vegetables and other types of food, which is something we have talked about many times.
We will continue to implement measures aimed, among other things, at reducing the administrative burden, increasing the number of small and medium-sized enterprises, maintaining stability on markets for various goods and the economic feasibility of utilities prices. All this will contribute to the further development of competition in Russia.
