Agenda: a roadmap for expanding the children’s items industry, assistance to people in a crisis, and improving the infrastructure for training highly skilled researchers and engineers
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good morning, colleagues.
Today, we will start with discussing support for families with children. Expanding the children’s items industry is an important part of this work. We need to focus on making higher-quality and safe goods, be it toys, sports equipment, clothes, baby care products, books and much more, in our country in accordance with the Russian standards.
We have an action plan in place which includes such requirements. Likewise, provisions have been made for measures aimed at improving the technological level of enterprises and counteracting the circulation of counterfeit goods.
We have put together a Government resolution approving a new roadmap for children’s goods for the next six years. It is designed to systematically expand infrastructure to ensure the manufacturing of necessary items and services for babies and adolescents, including the items used in education and upbringing.
Among other things, the state of the industry in the regions will be monitored in order to track the situation not only in terms of output, but also in terms of the level of implementation of modern innovative solutions.
I would like the Ministry of Industry and Trade to report annually on the progress of work to expand this industry. We will keep this issue under control at all times. As the President noted, there is nothing more important than children for a family and the state. Their health, education and well-being are the key priorities of our efforts. And of course, we need to make sure that parents can make their children happy with high-quality goods.
The next question concerns helping people struggling financially. To help them overcome their situation, the Government is implementing a number of initiatives with the social contract being one of them. It can be used to retrain employees and improve their skills in order for them to then find a job. Social contract can also be used to obtain a lump sum payment of up to 350,000 roubles to start a business, or up to 200,000 roubles to start a private subsidiary farm.
Low-income parents receive financial support during six months, which they can use to buy the essentials for their children, such as clothes, shoes, and school supplies.
We will allocate an additional amount of over 650 million roubles to 20 regions for these purposes.
Ms Golikova, please make sure the Ministry of Labour keeps a close eye on timely payments under such contracts, and obligations to our citizens are honoured in full. These funds will help the affected people work through difficult life situations.
Our next topic concerns improving the infrastructure for training highly skilled researchers and engineers. We discussed this area of work in detail at a recent strategic session of the Government, which was devoted to achieving higher and secondary vocational training goals set by the President.
In September, the President opened the country’s first world-class campus at Bauman Moscow State Technical University replete with instruction buildings and dormitories. The Quantum Park building with interdisciplinary laboratories of quantum, photon and fluid technologies is its central facility.
We will set aside over 1.5 billion roubles to properly equip this cluster. The funds will be made available this year and will be used to make advance payments for the necessary logistical support, including equipment, installation and commissioning works, and certification of clean production facilities. The President emphasised that such university campuses should become an intellectual resource for lifting our territories, improving the quality of life and making a visible contribution to the further progress of the entire country.
We hope that the Quantum Park will assume this important role and become a centre of attraction for the talented youth and where our best researchers will work, a place where experienced mentors from leading technological and industrial domestic companies will pass on their skills to younger generations of inventors and designers who will, in turn strengthen the technological, industrial and general economic sovereignty of our country.