The agenda includes writing off a portion of the regional budget loan debt, financing preferential loans for farmers, budget allocations for flood relief in Dagestan and Chechnya, and supporting the new regions.
Government meeting
Government meeting
Government meeting
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues.
First of all, I would like to highlight a number of decisions we have adopted to support the regions in the construction of social facilities, the renovation and construction of housing, and the development of road infrastructure.
The President emphasised the importance of reducing the debt burden of the Russian regions by writing off two-thirds of their budget loan obligations. He stressed that the resulting savings should be directed toward supporting investment, primarily in infrastructure projects.
The Government is systematically implementing these objectives. Today, we will reduce the federal budget obligations of eight additional regions by nearly 50 billion roubles. These include the Udmurt Republic and the Volgograd, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Ryazan, and Chelyabinsk regions. This will make it possible to carry on major repairs to housing and utility infrastructure without delay, as well as replacement of elevators in apartment buildings, the resettlement of residents from dilapidated housing, the renewal of public transport stock, and a number of other initiatives. These include the modernisation of key municipalities, the expansion of special economic zones, and the capitalisation of regional industrial development funds.
This decision will contribute to achieving the goals set by the head of state for sustainable and dynamic economic growth and, most importantly, for improving the wellbeing of our people.
Let us go ahead to the agenda.
Today, we will address the support of the agro-industrial complex.
The President noted that we must independently produce critically important goods and strengthen the infrastructure that is fundamental to national security, to entrepreneurs, and to improving people’s quality of life.
Agriculture is one of the key sectors in this regard. The Government is continuously working to develop the industry and ensure the country’s food sovereignty.
In order to reduce the financial burden on agricultural enterprises, we will allocate approximately 60 billion rubles from the federal budget in the form of subsidies to credit institutions. These funds will enable agricultural producers to meet their obligations under more than 41,000 subsidised loans issued for the production and processing of agricultural products, as well as for the manufacture of veterinary medicines, enzymes, feed, and feed additives. Financing has been provided both for short-term lending and for long-term investment projects.
We expect these measures to help maintain the financial stability of agricultural enterprises and ensure that people in Russia continue to have access to high-quality domestically produced food products.Now on the aid to the Russian regions that incurred losses from the natural disaster.
This spring very heavy precipitation caused floods, rockfalls and mudslides in some North Caucasus districts. They damaged thousands of buildings, dozens of bridges, roads, utility and power transmission lines.
Under President’s instructions, the Government continues to render all the necessary aid and support to the people hit by disaster. We have allocated funds for the residents’ primary needs and for restoring schools and kindergartens.
Meanwhile, it is high time to begin reinforcing the banks to minimize the adverse effects of natural phenomena in the future.
Today, we will additionally provide 2.5 billion roubles from the budget for a set of urgent measures in Dagestan and Chechen Republic. The money will be spent on clearing rivers and the construction of dams with the total length of 35 kilometres.
Colleagues, please keep these issues under your personal control, so that people and enterprises could return to their usual activity as soon as possible.
And some more on the support to new regions.
The President underscored that it is necessary to pay special attention to the integration of Donbass and Novorossiya into the country’s unified legal space so that they could reach national standards in all key indicators within the next four years.
To this end, the Government is carrying out a comprehensive programme for developing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, which should ensure, among other things, stable and balanced budgets of these territories. We allocated for this purpose over 33 billion roubles last and this year. These funds were spent on paying pensions to their residents in compliance with the regional legislation.
Today, we will allocate another 6.5 billion roubles for these purposes to meet the social obligations to our citizens in the third quarter in time.
And more. To raise the reliability of housing and utilities in the new Russian regions and republics we will channel almost 1.3 billion roubles for purchasing specialised hardware, including dump trucks, excavators and loaders. They are required to upgrade the heat- and water-supply networks and prepare the infrastructure for the autumn and winter season.
