The agenda: results of the meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects, supporting small and medium-sized businesses in the processing sector, additional funding for soft-loan programmes in rural territories, supporting soft auto-purchase and auto-leasing loans programmes.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Government meeting
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks at a Government meeting
Government meeting
Last week, the President chaired a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects. The meeting participants presented 19 national projects, due to be launched in early 2025.
All these projects aim to achieve national goals, charted by the President, and to accomplish numerous specific objectives to make the economy more resilient and to boost nationwide standards of living.
The President noted the need to quickly achieve them and also set forth the relevant standards of work. What is very important is that it is necessary to maintain permanent feedback with our citizens. Their opinion of whether specific issues are resolved successfully, quickly and in a high-quality manner has key significance.
At the same time, regions have a key role to play, while effectively accomplishing all pre-set objectives. It is necessary to assess all issues, including the provision of funding, with the Russian Federation’s regions once again before the year is out. If need be, we will have to do this during the New Year holiday season.
The President instructed us to suggest solutions for regions with the most complicated situation regarding the implementation of current national projects, as well as adjustments for national projects replacing the former.
We should closely analyse the entire line of planned indicators, so that they can be adjusted whenever necessary. They should clearly reflect expected results, specifically, real improvements in any specific sphere.
We have to work systemically with the regions. It is necessary to finalise financial mechanisms for Russian regions together with the State Council’s commissions. This includes measures to write off part of the public debt and to allocate targeted subsidies and loans for infrastructure modernisation projects.
We will continue to facilitate positive changes in those regions where socio-economic development levels remain low. Individual programmes have been drafted for ten such regions. Four of them have already been approved for Chuvashia, the Republic of Mari El, Adygea and the Kurgan Region. We will decide on six other territories in the near future.
Cities and populated localities in the Russian Far East and the Arctic are also of strategic importance for Russia. Events included in the master plans we have drafted are aimed at their comprehensive development. All of these must be taken into account in new national projects, such as Infrastructure for Life, Effective Transport System, Family, Long and Active Life, and Youth and Children. These projects should be finalised within a month. The practical work must begin right from the first days of the new year – strongly and without a delay, as we have agreed.
Large-scale plans have been outlined to transform the country within the next six days. The effort will be focused on making the life of our people better.
Colleagues, all presidential instructions should be carried out within maximally brief timeframes. It is necessary to make a concrete list of tasks and control their implementation. This is our personal responsibility to the nation.
Now let us talk about the approved decision on helping small and medium-sized businesses.
These businesses are of much importance for the economy as a whole. There are over 6.5 million of them in this country, accounting for one in every three jobs.
In keeping with the presidential instructions, special conditions have been created for small and medium-sized businesses, with premium rate reduced in half for them.
The President stressed the importance of boosting the efficiency of current support measures and the need to propose additional new ones.
The Government has decided to step up the assistance to the processing sector, whose products are needed in other branches of the economy. I am referring, among others, to producers of food products and pharmaceutical substances, fabrics and garments, plastics, glassware, and household appliances.
The premium rate will be reduced to 7.6 percent for them as of 1 January 2025.
This support will primarily enable small and medium-sized businesses to increase their profitability. They will keep billions of roubles at their disposal per annum in order to use them for further development of new products, expansion of output, stimulation of labour productivity, and improvement of conditions for employees.
One of the issues on our agenda today is improving the quality of life for people in rural areas.
As the President pointed out, this comprehensive project must be carried on, but overall, the necessary measures are being taken and our rural areas are improving.
An important part of these measures concerns decisions on modernising the outlook of residential areas beyond cities. Housing construction is actively underway there, including thanks to 3 percent mortgage rate programmes. Local residents can take our subsidised loans for the improvement of their households and connecting them to water and gas mains. And local organisations can borrow money at concessional rates to modernise infrastructure.
Over 24 billion roubles were set aside in the federal budget for these purposes this year, and over 11.5 billion roubles have recently been earmarked for servicing previous loans.
Today we will allocate another 14 billion roubles for this, helping subsidise such loans in the last three months of the year and maintain the same rate for over 170,000 previous loan contracts, including rural mortgages, easy-term consumer loans, and housing and infrastructure funding.
We believe that this decision will help maintain comfortable conditions for people’s life in rural areas.
Another issue concerns continued support for the producers and buyers of Russian-made vehicles.
The situation in that industry is also of great importance for thousands of enterprises in related sectors, such as metallurgy, electronics, chemistry and the machine tool industry. Together, they are our largest employers, and the transport mobility of our people depends on them.
The President also spoke about making cars affordable to people and the importance of demand on the commercial vehicles market for the economy.
We continue to improve support mechanisms for that purpose, so they remain effective and in demand by both the people and businesses.
Today, we will additionally allocate more than 18 billion roubles for easy-term vehicle loan and lease programmes. Overall, allocations for these spheres will amount to nearly 45 billion roubles in 2024.
People with disabilities, healthcare personnel, teachers, participants in the special military operation and their families will be offered a 25 percent discount for Russian-made vehicles and a 35 percent discount for electric vehicles.
Companies and entrepreneurs will be offered a reduced down payment for the lease of a broad range of vehicles, from long-haul to self-driving trucks.
We believe that this targeted financing will help support producers in the transport industry and related sectors, as well as help modernise the national vehicle pool and create quality vehicles.
