Agenda: Road Safety Improvement Federal Targeted Programme, implementing roadmaps to improve the investment climate and 11 other issues
On the draft Federal Targeted Programme Road Safety Improvement in 2013-2020
Implementation of roadmaps to improve investment climate in Russia
Dmitry Medvedev: The first item on the agenda is road safety, which is a very challenging issue for our country. Unfortunately, this is an urgent issue that evokes a lot of public interest and concerns everyone.
Road accidents inflict huge physical and material damage, leaving many people dead or disabled. In fact, over 280,000 people die or are injured in car accidents every year which is like the population of a large Russian city.
Various measures have been and are being taken. These issues are regularly addressed by the Government Commission on Road Traffic Safety. A number of decisions (including those spearheaded by the Commission) have been taken recently to introduce tougher penalties for traffic violations, primarily targeting drunk driving and other dangerous traffic violations. Certain amendments have already been introduced into legislative acts, while others are being reviewed either by the Government or the State Duma.
We have held interesting meetings with experts. Recently, in March, a major meeting took place between community representatives and senior officials from the Ministry of the Interior to discuss, among other things, how to improve the legislation. Today’s meeting will review a draft of the Federal Targeted Programme Road Safety Improvement in 2013-2020. I would like to remind you that a similar programme was carried out in 2006-2012 with a generally positive result and substantial decline in traffic injuries. Accident related injuries and fatalities (the gravest statistics) decreased by almost 20%.
We understand that this programme will not solve every problem. Further steps should be taken to promote responsibility among drivers. These efforts should involve all drivers, since we all understand that accidents often result from the careless, negligent and sometimes faulty behaviour of drivers. We need to take advantage of foreign experience, develop a photo and video enforcement system to dissuade traffic violations, and ensure that the government, community, drivers and pedestrians cooperate in addressing this issue.
I expect this programme to be supported by and benefit from the necessary input of experts, including within the framework of the Open Government. We have invited our colleagues from the expert community and from regional governments. They’ll have the floor as well.
Today we will also discuss roadmaps, or more precisely their implementation within the framework of the National Business Initiative. You all remember its aims. In addition to improving our rankings, we also need to boost business and investment activity, create modern jobs and increase contributions to the budget. This is extremely important for ensuring sustainable economic growth.
We are implementing nine roadmaps, which comprise 620 measures. I’d like to remind you that these roadmaps are especially important because they were formulated by businesses. It would also be logical to entrust the business community with assessing the results. It is a fact that business and the authorities – in this case, departments – often differ in their assessment of the effect of the decisions taken. This is normal, but we must do our best to bring their viewpoints closer, to find compromises and to determine priorities clearly.
There have been positive changes, including in connecting new clients to the electricity system, who can now be connected within six months, if they only require a small volume of electricity. Also, the tax service has created a system of government registration notification. However, we are not satisfied with the speed at which these roadmaps are being carried out: only about half of the 173 tasks have been fulfilled by the deadlines we set, approximately 40 are in the process of being implemented, while 52 have not been fulfilled, which is, of course, bad news. This means not only that the departments involved have taken the wrong attitude or are not working properly, but also that some instruments are ineffective, in which case we must say so. Or, they are too complicated.
If this is so, we must improve them or adapt them to the situation. I have said more than once that these roadmaps, even though they have been created with due regard of the business community’s opinion, are not dogmas, and that we must update them regularly. Wed need to improve this situation. And we should monitor those areas where no progress has been made. This is the responsibility of the Ministry of Economic Development and the Agency for Strategic Initiatives.
Alexei Ulyukayev: Thank you. Mr Medvedev, colleagues,
As Mr Prime Minister said in his opening speech, we have adopted nine roadmaps – for construction, customs administration, access to power grids, property registration, developing competition, promoting exports, and access of small and medium-sized businesses to state procurement. Four other roadmaps are still in the making, two of them are almost ready – Tax Administration and Valuation, Quality of Human Resources and Development of Private-Sector Social Services. These roadmaps were initiated by the business community, while the Ministry of Economic Development and the Strategic Initiatives Agency only helped to convert the initiative to the corresponding regulatory framework – a system of KPI and target indicators, complying with the World Bank's Doing Business ranking.
We are monitoring the implementation of the roadmaps together with businesses; as of the deadline, 84 of 173 tasks were fulfilled; 37 were still in progress; while 52 (almost one-third) were not fulfilled at all. Statistics vary greatly across the various roadmaps. The leaders are energy, customs administration, export support and property registration. The competition development, construction and company registration are the bottom ones, with the biggest numbers of tasks still not fulfilled.
Allow me to comment in brief on some of the roadmaps. The accessibility of power grids has indeed improved: new clients requesting power capacity below 150 kW can now be connected within 180 days and enjoy a three-year credit on their payment for the technological connection. This seriously cuts their costs – in fact, clients enjoy a 60% reduction of their financial burden. Rostekhnadzor has been excluded from the regulatory approval chain, which has significantly reduced paperwork. However, surveys suggest the situation varies across Russia. For example, in Moscow and the Moscow Region 71% of businesses admitted that the connection period had decreased, and significantly. In other Russian regions, however, less than half of local businesses surveyed, 46%, reported a shorter connection period. A quarter of respondents said they continue applying for Rostekhnadzor approval which is no longer mandatory. There is a certain level of inertia in this process.
To improve the customs administration, the requirement to submit transaction reports to the customs offices has been cancelled. The paper copy of the customs declaration no longer needs to be submitted to an authorized bank for monetary control purposes, and legal and technological possibilities for digital payments are being introduced. Three-fourths of the tasks on this roadmap have been fulfilled. According to the Federal Customs Service reports, the time needed for customs formalities has halved from 80 to 40 minutes. At the same time, surveys of the business community show different results, with a very high variance. While a large share of respondents, 50%, said their customs formalities take no more than three hours, another 20% cited a period in excess of 24-hours. Incidentally, it is not only the time actually spent at customs that is important, but the volatility of that time too. A business owner needs to plan logistics, rent railcars, etc., so they need to know exactly how much time customs formalities are going to take.
In construction, the Moscow Region is a pilot region, with the number of approval formalities reduced from 42 to 12, to less than one-third of the previous number. The timeframe for implementing residential development projects has been reduced by 43%.
With property registration, we have made significant progress in terms of online services. Property owners can now use the online Rosreestr federal property registration service to send a request and receive the result. Before the end of this year, a personal accounts system will be developed on the website, where people will be able to use state services free of charge.
The next roadmap is the Support of Foreign Market Entry and Exports. Subsidies for exporters’ bank interest have been introduced in compliance with WTO principles and rules. This prevents foreign countries from introducing discriminating policies against Russian companies and enables them to obtain funding at a reasonable level of interest (under 6.5%). New trade missions have been opened and foreign economic project certificates introduced; these trade missions operate as service centres for specific companies, promoting their export projects.
Unfortunately I do not have enough time to talk in detail about all the roadmaps. I will just say that we need to continue monitoring and evaluating them together with businesses to ensure openness and transparency and to actually convert these plans to reality, making sure they are enforced. We do not want only formal statistics on the number of tasks fulfilled. What we need are tangible improvements in the investment climate and improved assessments of the business community. Thank you.
Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you.
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