Agenda: additional state funding for preferential loans to agribusinesses, support for military service members, maternity capital spending options.
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Government meeting
Government meeting
Government meeting
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Before we start discussing the issues on our agenda, I would like to inform you about a decision that has been made. I am referring to increasing support for the nation’s agriculture.
As the President noted, strong agriculture is an important factor of strong economic growth. Growth in agriculture stimulates investment in expanding production and creating jobs.
The Government is implementing a series of system-wide measures to improve the sector’s efficiency, such as preferential lending to both small companies and large businesses. This form of state support has largely contributed to increasing production volumes. Grain harvests in Russia have exceeded 120 million tonnes over the past five years.
To maintain the momentum, we will allocate more than 42 billion roubles for state support of agriculture this year.
Most of the funding will be used to subsidise companies’ loans that cover the seasonal costs of purchasing fuel, seeds and mineral fertilisers for sowing next spring.
The rest of the funds will be directed to food-processing businesses that manufacture dairy and meat products, process fruits and berries, and implement breeding and genetics projects to improve domestic varieties of plants and promote livestock development.
Due to this form of state support, companies will be able to open cutting-edge production facilities and modernise existing ones, eventually improving consumer access to high-quality and healthy food made in Russia.
One of the most important items on our agenda today is support for our military service members, the fighters performing combat missions as part of the special military operation. As you know, the Government has allocated considerable resources for this purpose.
In response to the President’s instructions, we will allocate more than 11.3 billion roubles from the federal budget to the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation. The funds will be used to pay lump-sum compensations to fighters whose injuries during the special military operation have led to a disability. They have fulfilled their duty; now they need help from the state.
This social support should help them overcome the consequences of their wounds, undergo rehabilitation to minimise the damage to their health and return home to their families, friends and comrades as soon as possible.
The next issue concerns families with children.
The President emphasised that it is very important to raise their living standards and the quality of their lives, which should stimulate the birth rate.
The Government is implementing a wide range of measures for this purpose, primarily the maternity capital programme. The benefits received under this programme can be spent not only to improve the family’s living conditions, but also to pay for their children’s education, invest in the funded part of the mother’s pension or for a number of other purposes prescribed by the laws in force.
However, parents must get access to the funding faster, to be able to go ahead with their plans. Therefore, it is essential to reduce the processing time for their maternity capital spending applications. We will discuss this issue today.
Agencies’ response time to families’ requests for approval of their maternity capital spending plans will be halved, from ten to five working days, so parents will be able to take advantage of state support and address their priorities sooner.
