Mikhail Mishustin: “It is essential to support domestic businesses. We must create an environment conducive to the implementation of projects. A level playing field for entrepreneurship is one of the fundamental components of success.”
Mikhail Mishustin holds strategic session on improving economic efficiency and ensuring level conditions for businesses
Mikhail Mishustin holds strategic session on improving economic efficiency and ensuring level conditions for businesses
Mikhail Mishustin holds strategic session on improving economic efficiency and ensuring level conditions for businesses
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
We are continuing our series of strategic sessions aimed at further developing the economy. Earlier, we took part in the Made in Russia forum, where we discussed issues of interest to our exporters, in particular, the important task of ensuring a level playing field for doing business.
Today, we will examine this issue in greater detail, as it directly affects both technological and economic dynamics.
Healthy competition allows our companies – even those that are already leaders in their respective sectors – to continue moving forward. It drives them to improve the quality and attractiveness of their products, finetune production processes, modernise equipment, train personnel, and introduce best practices, thereby boosting overall productivity.
This work is especially relevant now, as our country is facing serious challenges, including those arising from potential shifts in global trade. This factor must be carefully considered.
It is essential to support domestic businesses. We must create an environment conducive to the implementation of projects. A level playing field for entrepreneurship is one of the fundamental components of success.
This is also vital for sustaining the momentum of domestic production, particularly in manufacturing, which has long served as one of the main engines of the national economy. After two years of accelerated growth, manufacturing output has increased by almost 20 percent. This year, growth has slowed somewhat, but still reached 3.2 percent over the first eight months. Mechanical engineering remains the primary driver, showing nearly 11 percent growth.
Double-digit growth rates are also being recorded in high-tech industries, including computers, electronics, optics, as well as pharmaceuticals and medical materials.
Overall economic growth is also supported by the construction sector and agriculture.
The current National Competition Development Plan is nearing completion at the end of this year. As part of this plan, regular monitoring of food prices has been conducted, and cooperation with retail chains has helped to significantly reduce markups on so-called first-price goods: the most affordable items in their categories.
Exchange-based trading has expanded, helping to balance supply and demand. Pharmacies have been actively supplied with medicines.
The Government has recently approved a new plan covering the period up to 2030, which aims to help achieve the national goals set by the President.
The Competition Development project is also in effect. Its main goal is to establish an effective system for competition policy at all levels: federal, regional, and municipal.
Much work still lies ahead. It is essential that public policy tools motivate businesses to adopt modern, innovative methods of operation.
In order to achieve this, we must not only closely monitor domestic developments but also engage actively with our international trading partners and work to ensure fair conditions within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Differences still persist in areas such as indirect taxation and administrative procedures, as well as technical, sanitary, and veterinary standards.
In some cases, insufficient control measures effectively encourage the import of goods from third countries into the Russian Federation without proper taxation. Every year, mobile customs teams uncover significant quantities of goods showing signs of value-added tax (VAT) evasion.
Payments in such cases are often made either in cash or in digital currencies, while subsequent sales are carried out through entities operating under the simplified taxation system, thereby avoiding indirect taxes.
Our key task is to create such conditions that would rule out the existence of such quasi-legal schemes.
In the international domain, as many of those present here are aware, we are aligning the customs risk management systems in the EAEU countries, as well as rules in other control and supervision activities.
This work is labour-intensive and painstaking enough. Still, there is a lot to be done, it is a must. It is important to create competitive opportunities for the market players and move along the entire chain — from verifying the import legality and generating a fair entry cost to the transparency of all money transactions in Russia regardless of their form.
Loopholes in the labour market regulation must also be plugged to prevent substitution of labour relations when a legal entity hires self-employed individuals thereby reducing its social insurance contributions.
The special regime for the self-employed shall continue. Yet, it is important to avoid abuse in applying it.
Combatting underground lending which brings about a flow of borrowers and lenders to the quasi-legal zone deserves special attention. And it is simply necessary to stop the illegal activity of such kind.
Today we will discuss in detail what other steps are needed to ensure equal conditions for doing business – for the enterprises operating in the country and those who are exploring new foreign platforms, with the common purpose – to raise the efficiency of our economy.
