Mikhail Mishustin: “Our priority is to increase exports outside of the commodity and energy sectors by 67 percent by 2030. This increase will be largely driven by exporting more manufactured goods, as well as agricultural products. Friendly countries must account for at least 80 percent of the total exports.”
Mikhail Mihustin’s opening remarks:
Mikhail Mishustin holds strategic session on promoting external economic activity
Mikhail Mishustin holds strategic session on promoting external economic activity
Mikhail Mishustin holds strategic session on promoting external economic activity
Mikhail Mishustin holds strategic session on promoting external economic activity
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Today, we will be discussing external economic activity. It serves as one of the key avenues for building momentum in many sectors of the economy, increasing demand for Russian goods and services, as well as supporting new manufacturing projects and technological innovation.
We have been facing serious challenges in this regard. The pressure created by sanctions keeps growing, while the tariff-related escalation has made imbalances in international trade worse.
Meanwhile, the balance of global economic power is shifting for many countries with the Global South and East, primarily the BRICS countries, taking up a larger share of the global economy, while the Group of Seven’s share is shrinking.
In this context, the Government has been seeking to adjust its economic support mechanisms for achieving the national goals as set forth by the president, while also promoting supply-side economics.
Our priority is to increase exports outside of the commodity and energy sectors by 67 percent by 2030. This increase will be largely driven by exporting more manufactured goods, as well as agricultural products. Friendly countries must account for at least 80 percent of the total exports.
During the recent meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects, the president emphasised that we had to make foreign trade more tech-savvy so that Russia exports more technologically advanced goods and which have a higher added value. At the same time, we must import high-technology goods whenever similar products are not available from Russian manufacturers. This approach is expected to serve as an incentive for changing our domestic labour market by creating more demand for highly-skilled personnel.
The Government has been working on the International Cooperation and Exports national project since early 2025. In particular, it provides for integrating Russian exports into global transport corridors in order to deliver them to Africa and Latin America by relying on Russia’s ports in the Baltic, Azov and Black seas, and on the Pacific coast.
We are building logistics centres, port infrastructure and manufacturing clusters. In the future, companies will be able to locate their manufacturing capabilities in the key hubs along these routes. This way, they can reach a wider customer base and reduce their dependence on the transit hubs controlled by unfriendly countries. Accordingly, they would face fewer risks and benefit from lower business costs.
These efforts brought about a substantial increase in exports outside of the commodity and the energy sectors in the first ten months of 2025. In fact, this indicator increased by almost 10 percent, with the increase largely attributable to manufactured goods. Machine building and the chemical industry, as well as metal processing where the main growth drivers.
This amounted to over 10 trillion roubles in exports. In 2025, we have already succeeded in exceeding the threshold as set forth by the President in terms of our exports to friendly countries. In fact, we achieved what can be called a historic high of 86 percent. There were substantial increases in our exports to China, Belarus, India and Kazakhstan.
The effort to switch to settlements in national currencies continues. In the first ten months, their share in our trade with all countries reached 85 percent. In this regard, we have also exceeded the 70-percent objective ahead of schedule. The rouble accounts for over one half of these settlements.
This progress becomes even more apparent for our core trading partners where this indicator has exceeded 90 percent.
We have been proactive in shaping the infrastructure for supporting exports. It must be fine-tuned as part of the national project in a way that enables us to find new trade partners faster. Focusing on priority groups of products is also on our agenda. These include high-value-added products and engineering goods.
Today, our goals to enhance and consolidate Russia’s footprint on the global market and expand our industrial presence across more locations largely define the geography of the export and investment initiatives we launch.
Of course, we are also promoting energy trade. Some of its segments are not very flexible. In order to redirect these exports, they need to invest within a longer horizon, and at a higher cost too.
Nevertheless, and despite the unprecedented external pressure, Russia has been very effective in adapting to sanctions. A considerable part of our energy exports focuses on friendly countries. Over the past three years, the share of our core customers has doubled up to 80 percent as of the first half of 2025.
Agricultural products are also important in terms of our exports. In fact, whether we succeed in consolidating this potential will define the sector’s future. That said, we can already see that the effort to export more high-value-added goods has helped increase the average price of a tonne of exports by a fourth. Russia has significantly increased its exports of confectionary, meat, dairy and other products.
Colleagues,
Our effort to reshape our international trade has been gathering positive momentum. Moving forward, we must focus on the segments which were mentioned by the president. We must also do more to work with the regions, businesses and development institutions.
Today, we will have a detailed discussion on what
needs to be done to keep advancing and what additional measures we need to transform our external economic activity.
