Mikhail Mishustin and State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin “The Government of the Russian Federation: <…> shall submit to the State Duma annual reports on the results of its work, including on issues raised by the State Duma” (The Constitution of the Russian Federation, Article 114, Paragraph 1a).
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
The Government’s annual report to the State Duma
Excerpts from the transcript:
Mikhail Mishustin: Mr Volodin, Ms Matviyenko, Deputies of the State Duma, Colleagues,
Today, I am presenting the fourth report about the Government’s activities. We have discussed part of its topics in detail at meetings with the parliamentary parties.
I will focus on the results we achieved last year, and on our future development priorities.
I think there is no need to explain in this hall the conditions in which all of us had to work. A sanctions blow was delivered against Russia, one unequalled in force in recent history.
In the beginning, the West attempted to assure everyone that the sanctions were not directed against Russian citizens. There were no particular illusions on this score even then, but now even a person unversed in global politics is aware that it is the Russian people who are their main target.
They tried to bring down our financial system so that people would not be able to use bank cards. They tried to disrupt economic and business ties. They made their own companies leave the Russian market with great losses, so that the goods we are used to would disappear from the shelves, and to throw out Russian employees of those companies on the street and deprive them of income. That is, the people whose hard work created their multibillion profits. They wanted to provoke mass unemployment and drastically decrease the quality of life in our country.
They stopped at nothing: they blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, arrested bank accounts, and banned Russia from the international payments system. They tried to block all banking operations and all other economic activities.
Remember what they said about the sanctity, the inviolability of private ownership. But the property and money of our people and companies are being arrested just because they are from Russia.
Last year, we had to respond to challenges created by yet another package of sanctions almost every day. They required a prompt response and a constant search for an answer to the question: what will happen next? We were working on countermeasures to protect the people, while at the same time laying the foundation for the ability to move forward, ensure economic growth and reach the national targets set by the President.
We were doing this together with you. All branches of power, regardless of the level – federal, regional and local – worked efficiently to implement tasks that were crucial for the state. Thanks to our coordinated efforts led by the President, we managed to deal with the most complicated issues of the past year.
I want to thank the State Duma, the Federation Council, regional heads and all people of Russia who helped in each region and each municipality. We have overcome all challenges together.
Last spring, analysts predicted a double-digit fall of the Russian GDP. But we survived.
It was not easy. The decline, inevitable in this situation, was quite moderate. However, we managed to bring the economy back to the growth trajectory.
Now, even some international organisations are saying that we will see growth in 2023 and leave behind the developed economies in terms of GDP growth in 2024.
This is not the first time that our economic system has shown such flexibility. In 2020, amid the CIVID pandemic, it showed that it was more stable than had been expected. We overcame that crisis more confidently than many Western countries which saw a bigger drop of GDP.
In March 2022, at the instruction of the President, the Government and the Bank of Russia developed measures to stabilise the situation in the financial sector.
Due to the prompt and precise actions of the Central Bank leadership, the work of lending institutions and currency and stock markets was normalised. We avoided the external blocking of transactions inside the country to a large extent due to the existing national settlements infrastructure. The replacement of the dollar and euro in our foreign trade has allowed us to expand operations with friendly states.
Payments for goods and services and money transfers are being made as usual. All bank cards in Russia continue working. We managed to alleviate the inflation pressure as well and maintain the stability of the banking sector.
Our joint decisions formed the basis of a priority action plan to ensure economic development in the face of external sanctions pressure.
It included more than 300 measures which had been selected out of 33,000 proposals received from all over the country. By June, the impact of negative factors had already markedly decreased, and we approached the third quarter with a certain margin of safety.
Significant funds were earmarked for the implementation of the plan. Direct support from the budget and the National Welfare Fund alone amounted to 1.5 trillion roubles.
Almost 4 trillion roubles were allocated under various programmes for concessional lending to companies, and that's not counting VEB.RF guarantees for about 1 trillion roubles. We also restructured loans at floating rates and under the Bank of Russia programmes amounting to about 6 trillion roubles.
The implementation of these measures made it possible to promptly resolve the most important tasks.
In implementing them, we relied on primary data from all sources. We used reliable feedback from people and businesses, which the President always reminds us to fall back on. We created a new platform management model.
Modern information technologies enable us to pursue a coordinated policy in all sectors and the social sphere and support their development using budgetary funds.
We work in close coordination with the State Council, the Presidential Executive Office, the Bank of Russia, public associations, companies and corporations.
We made it much easier to do business.
Income tax rates have been lowered for companies in a number of sectors. The cadastral value of property for calculating payments to the state was frozen. Deferments were provided on payment of insurance premiums and VAT was reduced to zero for hotel services.
In addition, we helped with working capital, primarily through a line of preferential loan programmes. More than 1.5 trillion roubles were issued to major companies in industry, agriculture, transport, energy and information technology.
Thanks to these steps, businesses have been able to free up resources and channel them into restructuring their production and logistics chains and adapting to the new conditions.
More than 200 licences and permits can now be processed through the public services portal and, importantly, it can be done much faster than before, with less paperwork.
We continue taking efforts to reduce administrative burden, with introduction of a number of mandatory requirements postponed and over 2.5 million business permits plus some 5 million driver’s licenses automatically renewed.
These measures have allowed our citizens and companies to save over 300 billion roubles.
For Russian-based foreign organisations, we have simplified the mechanism for transferring registration from the foreign to domestic jurisdiction in special administrative regions on the Oktyabrsky and Russky islands in the Kaliningrad Region and in the Primorye Territory, respectively. Over the past year, 83 companies have already re-registered in those territories, which is triple the number compared to the previous period.
Solving urgent tasks of economic stabilisation has allowed us to achieve, under the current conditions, the national development goals set by the President, as well as national projects, strategic initiatives, and government programmes.
In 2022, most national projects were executed at nearly 100 percent of the annual plan, meaning that schools, roads and hospitals were built as scheduled.
We have also re-launched the entire mechanism of state programmes. Digital modernisation has allowed for a greater interaction between departments, reducing the problem-solving period from 90 to 10-15 days. These results are also close to 100-percent implementation.
The Government has taken consistent efforts to focus its activities on 12 medium-term priorities in order to accelerate the economy’s adaptation to the current challenges. I should emphasise that those include no secondary ones. I will name them not in order of their importance but just as they are listed as each one is equally relevant for the lives of our citizens and for our economic development.
The first priority: as I have already mentioned, last year’s key achievement was that we maintained macroeconomic stability. The federal budget remains the core tool for implementing all our plans. We have adjusted our policy in this area as well, focusing on strengthening financial stability and reducing the impact of the forced restructuring of economic ties on the medium- and long-term economic potential.
Additional funds were allocated for anti-crisis programmes aimed at providing affordable resources, facilitating deliveries of imported equipment and parts, and supporting basic industries and the most vulnerable groups of citizens.
I want to thank all of you for promptly introducing amendments to the relevant legislation. We have jointly drawn up and adopted a balanced three-year budget; this is a socially oriented document and a development budget.
Yet another important priority is developing the social sphere, primarily improving the quality of life and wellbeing of Russia’s citizens. Given the sanctions pressure and the resulting surge of inflation, it has become the main trend in our work to support people’s incomes. Therefore, following the President’s instructions, we used a special procedure on two occasions – starting 1 June 2022, and then early January of this year – to raise the minimum wage. As a result, it has increased by more than 13.5%. We did the same with the minimum living wage, which has increased by almost 17%. This means that we have managed to preserve the incomes of 15 million people.
I am referring, among others, to families with children, who have found themselves in a difficult financial situation. We are trying to make assistance to them as targeted as we possibly can so that it can take life circumstances into account. As of 1 April 2022, we expanded monthly payments to all needy parents with children aged 8 to 17 years. It averages from 6,000 to 12,000 roubles per child per month depending on individual situations. In this way we have given support to over 3.5 million families that are bringing up about 5.5 million children.
Generally, we are making the granting of all government support to people more simple and convenient and based on social treasury principles. By now, we have converted to this format 31 federal social protection measures. This means that nearly 35 million people will now receive targeted payments either automatically or based on a single online application.
We have preserved and expanded the maternity capital programme, which has proved its effectiveness and relevance. Last year, it was an important source of support for 1.3 million families, which used these funds – more often than not to improve their living conditions. And we began indexing it to the actual inflation rate, not the forecasted one as in the past. Since 1 February of this year, maternity capital has grown by almost 12% to nearly 587,000 roubles for the first child and over 775,000 roubles for the second.
Now parents can use it to pay for educational services for their children rendered by individual businessowners.
There are expanded opportunities for using maternity capital funds to provide monthly payments. Families whose income is less than double the living wage can receive them not only for their second child but also all their children aged up to three years regardless of the birth order in the amount of one minimum living wage per child per month.
We have extended maternity capital to cover the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhye Region and the Kherson Region. In keeping with the President’s instruction it can be available to all families in these constituent entities of Russia, whose children were born or adopted after 1 January 2007.
An important social trend is providing care for older generations. In keeping with instructions issued by the head of state, we adjusted the non-contributory pensions of unemployed old-age pensioners by more than 8.5% in early January and by another 10% on 1 June. Thus, their average amount increased by approximately 3,000 roubles to over 20,000 roubles.
Now let us talk about healthcare.
Preserving and strengthening people’s health and boosting life expectancy are hugely important national tasks.
All of us would like to see a strong and modern Russia. This means that people should always have an opportunity to get high-quality medical treatment or have a check-up without a long wait. This should apply in particular to elderly people and parents with children.
Last year, over 270 hospitals and outpatient clinics were built, as were 700 rapidly erected medical and obstetric stations and outpatient clinics. Thorough overhauls were completed at 1,300 facilities, with 37,000 units of equipment supplied plus 2,000 ambulances and 4,000 vehicles for transporting doctors and patients.
We have increased availability of high-tech medical assistance by adding eight new types offered at federal medical organisations. Almost 1.5 million people took advantage of this assistance free of charge last year (which is 10 percent more than in 2021), including high-cost heart or vascular surgeries and organ and tissue transplants. These are not just dry statistics, they represent the painstaking work of top-notch doctors and the curing of many grave illnesses.
Following the President’s instruction, we made medical rehabilitation more accessible. More than 1.3 million citizens underwent rehabilitation.
Previously, this type of care was primarily inpatient, and a person had to go to hospital. Now it is available on an outpatient basis and in other formats convenient for people. For this, over 150 regional medical organisations and 400 specialised departments were outfitted with all the necessary equipment last year. Approximately 9 billion roubles have been allocated for this, and almost 2 billion more – to equip 28 federal centres. People across the country now have additional opportunities to improve their health. We also intensified the fight against socially significant diseases. Last year, 74 outpatient cancer care centres opened in half of the country's regions. Now there are such centres in all the Russian regions. We are upgrading vascular centres and their primary care departments.
During my report to the State Duma last year, I asked you to expedite the adoption of the draft law on a unified register of bone marrow donors. I want to thank you for promptly addressing this issue and for the lives saved. The register was launched in September. It contains information about more than 190,000 donors, which is almost three times the number of entries in the largest local register that existed before. We have never had such a large-scale database before, each line of which is a chance for people to recover.
Thank you!
Yet another important priority is developing the social sphere, primarily improving the quality of life and wellbeing of Russia’s citizens. Given the sanctions pressure and the resulting surge of inflation, it has become the main trend in our work to support people’s incomes. Therefore, following the President’s instructions, we used a special procedure on two occasions – starting 1 June 2022, and then early January of this year – to raise the minimum wage. As a result, it has increased by more than 13.5%. We did the same with the minimum living wage, which has increased by almost 17%. This means that we have managed to preserve the incomes of 15 million people.
I am referring, among others, to families with children, who have found themselves in a difficult financial situation. We are trying to make assistance to them as targeted as we possibly can so that it can take life circumstances into account. As of 1 April 2022, we expanded monthly payments to all needy parents with children aged 8 to 17 years. It averages from 6,000 to 12,000 roubles per child per month depending on individual situations. In this way we have given support to over 3.5 million families that are bringing up about 5.5 million children.
Generally, we are making the granting of all government support to people more simple and convenient and based on social treasury principles. By now, we have converted to this format 31 federal social protection measures. This means that nearly 35 million people will now receive targeted payments either automatically or based on a single online application.
We have preserved and expanded the maternity capital programme, which has proved its effectiveness and relevance. Last year, it was an important source of support for 1.3 million families, which used these funds – more often than not to improve their living conditions. And we began indexing it to the actual inflation rate, not the forecasted one as in the past. Since 1 February of this year, maternity capital has grown by almost 12% to nearly 587,000 roubles for the first child and over 775,000 roubles for the second.
Now parents can use it to pay for educational services for their children rendered by individual businessowners.
There are expanded opportunities for using maternity capital funds to provide monthly payments. Families whose income is less than double the living wage can receive them not only for their second child but also all their children aged up to three years regardless of the birth order in the amount of one minimum living wage per child per month.
We have extended maternity capital to cover the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhye Region and the Kherson Region. In keeping with the President’s instruction it can be available to all families in these constituent entities of Russia, whose children were born or adopted after 1 January 2007.
An important social trend is providing care for older generations. In keeping with instructions issued by the head of state, we adjusted the non-contributory pensions of unemployed old-age pensioners by more than 8.5% in early January and by another 10% on 1 June. Thus, their average amount increased by approximately 3,000 roubles to over 20,000 roubles.
Now let us talk about healthcare.
Preserving and strengthening people’s health and boosting life expectancy are hugely important national tasks.
All of us would like to see a strong and modern Russia. This means that people should always have an opportunity to get high-quality medical treatment or have a check-up without a long wait. This should apply in particular to elderly people and parents with children.
Last year, over 270 hospitals and outpatient clinics were built, as were 700 rapidly erected medical and obstetric stations and outpatient clinics. Thorough overhauls were completed at 1,300 facilities, with 37,000 units of equipment supplied plus 2,000 ambulances and 4,000 vehicles for transporting doctors and patients.
We have increased availability of high-tech medical assistance by adding eight new types offered at federal medical organisations. Almost 1.5 million people took advantage of this assistance free of charge last year (which is 10 percent more than in 2021), including high-cost heart or vascular surgeries and organ and tissue transplants. These are not just dry statistics, they represent the painstaking work of top-notch doctors and the curing of many grave illnesses.
Colleagues,
I would like to address the issue of children’s healthcare separately. It is necessary to take care of the well-being of the younger generation from an early age. This is a task not only for parents, but also for us, for the entire state. After all, we all want our children to grow up happy and healthy.
We launched a unique programme to expand neonatal screening. It allows doctors to diagnose 40 congenital and hereditary diseases at the earliest stage and immediately provide assistance and prescribe the necessary treatment for a child. We are talking about saving the lives of several thousand babies every year.
We purchased about 300 units of medical and laboratory equipment worth almost 1.5 billion roubles and trained specialists.
Previously, this screening was available only in pilot regions, but this year, we held large-scale neonatal evaluations throughout the country. This programme will continue free of charge for citizens. Not only is diagnosis important, but also timely treatment. As you know, a special foundation called the Circle of Kindness was created, at the President’s initiative, to help children with serious, rare diseases. It has been operating for about two years. But in such a short time, it has already provided support to more than 5,000 children.
In December, a very important decision was prepared following the President’s instruction, which will allow even more young patients to receive medicines paid for by the foundation. These are children with so-called high-cost ICD diseases. Thank you, colleagues, for your support and for adopting this law.
Now about education.
I will start with preschools. A few years ago, parents had a hard time placing their child in a kindergarten. There weren't enough places. Due to the Government’s assistance, Russian regions have been building plenty of kindergartens – almost 240 in 2022, and more than 1,000 over the past three years. They will serve over 150,000 children.
To maintain this standard across Russia, we supported the regions that had the biggest difficulties, the Trans-Baikal Territory, and the republics of Buryatia and Ingushetia, by allocating 6 billion roubles. By the end of this year, they will carry out major repairs of kindergartens that need it. As many as 36 new kindergartens have been built. Places at preschools for children aged 3-7 are now available all over Russia.
To provide them with opportunities to attend modern schools after kindergarten, we are implementing presidential programmes to build and renovate educational institutions. Last year, more than 1,500 school buildings were renovated, and over 250 new ones built. But a school is more than walls and new furniture. They need equipment, textbooks and other materials, and the internet. We are providing pupils with all these things in every part of the country.
At the same time, we are updating the fleet of school buses so that the children can safely get to their schools. More than 4,000 school buses have been procured. During my working trips, the heads of the regions personally told me that school buses were crucial, especially in rural and remote areas.
Colleagues,
The best achievement of Russian education is the children’s victories. Russian teams annually participate in the eight most significant international school Olympiads. Last year, they won 43 medals, mostly gold and silver (32 and 11, respectively). This is the best result in terms of gold medals in the last 10 years.
I congratulate these pupils from the bottom of my heart. I am proud of them and of our country. It is especially gratifying because this year has been declared by the President the Year of Teachers and Mentors. And I certainly want to thank every teacher and mentor who prepared the winners. They should get a large share of the credit for their pupils’ success because they have invested a lot of knowledge and effort in them.
It is important to create proper conditions for the younger generation to engage in creative projects. To do this, we are modernising children's art schools. About 200 of them have been renovated, and 300 were supplied with new musical instruments, equipment and educational materials to make sure that the children who attend classes there could try various arts and be exposed to culture.
On Saturday, we will mark the professional holiday of cultural workers. I sincerely wish each of them all the best and every success.
There is much to say about the attention paid to culture. I will briefly list several facts. New municipal museums are opening across the country, and library collections are being replenished.
In 68 regions, 336 rural houses of culture were built or repaired, and 23 Russian regions now have 80 mobile multifunctional cultural centres so that people living in remote villages could watch films and listen to concerts.
Young people aged 14 to 22 can use the Pushkin Card, created at the initiative of the President, to see cultural achievements. By the way, it has already been issued to more than eight million people.
In 2022, which was declared the Year of Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of Russia, it could be used to attend over 200,000 events and watch over 600 Russian films. Every fifth person bought a ticket to them with the Pushkin Card.
We allocated additional funds for domestic film production. The total amount of financing amounted to more than 11.5 billion roubles. Their box office earnings are growing and, by the way, reached their peak over the past five years in January.
Our third priority is to ensure stability in the labour market.
Like in all previous years, it was important for us to protect people, their income and employment. In line with the President’s instructions, we have adopted a whole range of measures, first of all, expanding the opportunities for training and mastering new professional skills. Nearly 200,000 people completed a training course.
We have re-launched the hiring incentive programme with a focus on young people who tend to find it harder to find suitable jobs due to a lack of experience. We reimburse organisations for the partial remuneration of employees they hire, with seven billion roubles allocated for this purpose. Last year, companies received applications for more than 150,000 jobs, and 26,000 people have already been hired. This practice continues.
We paid special attention to personnel matters in the defence sector. We are attracting professionals from other Russian regions and organising free training in the professions these enterprises need. We are also providing relocation assistance. Last year, such assistance was provided to approximately 7,500 people.
Due to this support, the unemployment rate went down last year to a record low of 3.7 percent in December 2022 and 3.6 percent in January 2023.
Despite a minor decline last year, Rosstat has reported people’s real incomes resumed growing in the fourth quarter of last year.
One more priority was to maintain people’s quality of life and to satisfy domestic demand.
The panic buying in the first few months, when stores were cleaned out, called for emergency solutions. People saw very soon that the majority of basic necessities remained available. To attain that goal, we lowered import duties on some groups of products and coordinated parallel imports.
The package of measures adopted by the Government and the Bank of Russia helped us to keep inflation down. We see that it is approaching the target figure now.
The green corridor for imported goods has helped us to prevent shortages. We have also prohibited the re-export of equipment, component parts and medical goods. This has kept some 1,700 kinds of products in the domestic market.
We saw that people were most of all concerned about the potential shortage of foods. Many people today remember the food shortages of 30-odd years ago. But our agricultural sector did its job well. Food production increased by over 10 percent. The level of food security in Russia is one of the highest in the world. Our domestic market has a surplus of grain (177.8 percent against the 95 percent target stipulated in the food security doctrine), sugar (103.2 percent vs 90 percent), vegetable oil (211 percent vs 90 percent), meat (100 percent vs 85 percent) and fish (153 percent vs 85 percent).
We had the largest ever grain harvest last year, even compared to the Soviet period: 157 million tonnes, which is a big achievement for our agricultural sector. We set new records in the production of oil crops and increased the production of meat, potatoes, greenhouse vegetables, and fruits.
We continue to develop our agriculture and to increase production capacities in the main sectors. We have returned some 450,000 hectares of land to agricultural use and have built 25 fish processing plants.
This was largely made possible by the systemic support provided to Russian agriculture thanks to your active support and involvement. Total financing last year exceeded 420 billion roubles.
This approach allowed us to increase the funding of rural areas to improve the quality of life for the people there. We built new housing and roads and improved the territory. We will continue to help our agricultural producers.
We continue to focus on housing issues.
A year ago, I said that we had built 93 million square metres of housing, a record high in the history of our country, including the Soviet period.
But in 2022 we built nearly 103 million square metres of housing, and over 3.5 million families improved their housing conditions.
Of course, mortgages are the main instrument for addressing housing problems today. Last year, three fourths of all home sales in new residential districts were closed with the help of loans.
In response to the new economic environment, we have upgraded the following programmes. We have extended the programme of subsidised mortgages until the middle of 2024 and expanded the mortgage programme for families with two underage children.
We continue to pull down housing stock that is unfit for habitation throughout the country.
In 2022 we relocated 193,000 people from over 3 million square metres of derelict housing and allocated 43 billion roubles for accelerating this programme.
As per the President’s instructions, we have launched a new relocation programme, under which nearly 5,000 people in nine regions have been relocated from 110,000 square metres of dilapidated housing.
To improve living standards in privately owned housing, …
To improve living conditions for citizens in the private residential sector such as villages and rural areas, we continue implementing the social gasification programme which was launched at the President’s initiative. Over the past year, gas lines were extended to about half a million homes. The programme has now become permanent, bringing natural gas to more people’s homes free of charge. We have also expanded this programme to schools, kindergartens and hospitals.
It is important that people have the necessary infrastructure right where they leave. With this in view, we are drafting a layout for the comprehensive development of territories for years to come. Major construction covered by the federal budget has been included in the Construction five-year state programme, which is worth over 4.5 trillion roubles and includes thousands of facilities such as motor roads, airports, research centres, healthcare and educational institutions, and many others. We plan to complete work on more than 1,500 federal and regional projects.
We are also reducing the volume of construction in progress while increasing the rate at which we complete new housing.
Last year, some 150 billion roubles were allocated as advanced financing. In the current conditions, we have managed to utilise this scheme for the construction of regional facilities: starting in May, Russian regions will receive up to 180 billion roubles in financing.
To make citizens’ local travels convenient, we are making active efforts to purchase new buses, trolleybuses and trams for towns across the country.
I would like to particularly thank Vyacheslav Volodin and Valentina Matviyenko for their support in this regard.
The project to upgrade urban electric transport has become a worthy addition to our work that has been implemented in ten Russian regions since last year. Within the next three years, we will allocate some 100 billion roubles to this end.
We also implement projects to improve public spaces, with more than 11,000 parks, courtyards, embankments and streets already upgraded, including those chosen during the national competition for the best projects to create a comfortable urban environment in small towns and historical settlements.
At the president’s instruction, we have doubled its funding to 20 billion roubles and expanded it by inviting towns with the population of up to 200,000 to participate. This has resulted in another 80 comprehensive projects for improving public recreation spaces to be implemented in 48 entities.
We should make our regions comfortable for travellers as well – all the more so as domestic tourism is becoming increasingly popular in Russia, with more than 60 million trips last year. Tourism is now among the fastest growing industries, which has created about 70,000 new related jobs in the regions.
During the off-season, the tourism industry was helped along by the tourism cashback programme. For the two years since its launch, nearly 4.5 million people have taken advantage of this opportunity, with 18 billion roubles provided in total cashback and another 14 billion roubles in cashback for children’s holidays vouchers. During this period, more than one million children enjoyed tours during their school holidays.
We will continue developing other tourist programmes for children as well. Last year, a programme for support of school trips for pupils in years 5-9 was launched jointly with regions, allowing 97,000 students from 18 regions to take trips.
We can see that investors are showing major interest in tourist destinations, as well as transport, logistics and construction; these two sectors have a double-digit investment growth rate.
Our fifth priority. The Government sought to create favourable conditions for private initiative and attraction of capital. As a result, over the past 12 months, investment has continued to grow, by almost 5 percent.
We have achieved reasonable risk sharing between the state and business. We have made precise adjustments to the package of support measures. It includes infrastructure budget loans, a project-financing factory, and public-private partnership mechanisms, as well as offset investment contracts and special investment contracts.
I would like to separately address those investors who have continued to do business in Russia despite the sanctions and pressure. We have created all the necessary conditions for companies that see their future in Russia, including for foreign businesses from unfriendly states.
Despite all the restrictions, the denial of property rights, and the discriminatory measures that Russian businesses have faced in the West, foreign companies have been operating comfortably here.
Russia is always open to lucrative projects. And we will definitely support those who decide to implement them in our country. I have no doubt that this will ensure mutually beneficial cooperation.
In cases where foreign companies discontinue the management of their businesses in Russia, showing disregard for the future of their facilities and employees, we will protect the interests of our people.
We will continue to support small businesses. This segment provides a fifth of the gross domestic product and about a third of jobs in Russia. SMEs were the first hit by the disruption of supply chains. They needed help. The Government has provided them with almost 1.25 trillion roubles worth of loan support, as well as preferential microloans at an average interest rate of 6.5 percent. The preferential equipment leasing programme has been extended. We have issued gratuitous grants of up to 500,000 roubles to young entrepreneurs and social businesses.
We extended the insurance premium and tax payment deadlines under the simplified taxation regime; that saved businesses more than 800 billion roubles. Companies with less than six employees and revenues below 60 million roubles are entitled to a new regime and can use an automated simplified taxation system.
We have zeroed SMEs’ commission for transfers in the Faster Payments System (SBP).
State-owned companies are now required to procure 25 percent of goods and services from small businesses. Moreover, the payment period was reduced to seven working days, and the advance payment was increased to 50 percent. As a result, SMEs’ sales have almost doubled over the past three years, and exceeded 7 trillion roubles.
Colleagues,
The following two priorities include creating our own production and ensuring technological sovereignty. They are closely interconnected and can be addressed only as a bundle.
At the President’s instruction, the Government is creating the necessary environment for developing advanced products and technologies. These domestic solutions are required to ensure economic growth and to improve the social sphere. We encourage the creation of hi-tech production sites and the launch of major industrial projects. All-around state support measures are yielding significant results in many key areas.
Speaking of the shipbuilding industry, two large-tonnage Aframax-type tankers to transport refined petroleum products were commissioned last year which is important. The largest and the most powerful nuclear-powered icebreaker Ural sailed on its maiden voyage. This is the third vessel of this class that was built to navigate the Northern Sea Route. The Russian ice-resistant self-propelled platform which has been in the works for a long time now becoming operational in the Arctic latitudes is another important development.
These projects are unique in their own way since they use the latest breakthrough technological solutions. It won’t be an overstatement to say that our country can be proud of these achievements.
In the aircraft industry, we are creating a line of modern aircraft and helicopters. Last year, aerodynamic tests of the upgraded Sukhoi Superjet were completed in full and it will now be equipped with the PD-8 Russian-made engines of the fifth generation instead of foreign units. Its first flight is planned within the next three months. Flight tests of the regional IL-114 and the Baikal light multi-purpose aircraft prototypes were carried out successfully as well. The PD-14 engine and the MS-21 composite wing were certified in December.
The decisions regarding the required amount of funding for the industry have been adopted. It is now imperative not to slow down the pace, which concerns the production line’s modernisation as well. In 2026, we plan to produce over100 Russian aircraft of various modifications yearly.
In the automotive industry, we managed to not only keep major domestic enterprises in business, but to launch new conveyor lines as well despite sanctions-induced restrictions on supplies of necessary parts and components and the fact that a number of foreign companies left our country.
The electric vehicle production sites opened in Moscow and the Lipetsk Region. The special economic zone of Alabuga, Tatarstan, began to build light commercial vehicles that can be effectively used on public transit lines.
With regard to railway engineering, we launched a new site for manufacturing metro trains and, jointly with Belarus, trams in the Nizhny Novgorod Region.
The machine tool industry is a priority area and a key factor in achieving technological independence. Russia has unique competencies in the manufacture of the bulk of modern metalworking equipment, including with numerical control. Over the past year, the output of domestic machine tools and instruments has increased by almost a quarter. We will continue to expand the share of our products in the country.
In radio electronics, we have updated the programme for promoting this industry and focused on forming our own electronic engineering. Over the past three years, over 238 billion roubles have been set aside to support this sector which made it possible to almost double Russia’s share on the domestic market.
Factories to produce microelectronics, electronic modules, printers, computers and peripheral equipment became operational. We supported over 400 projects to develop electronic equipment, components and means of production of electronic items. Almost 150 new projects were launched in 2022 alone.
Additional power generating capacities were introduced last year, and tens of thousands of kilometres of power transmission lines were laid meaning that over 400,000 households, small and medium-sized enterprises and industrial companies now have access to uninterrupted power supply.
Notably, a project to set up serial production of Russian-made high-capacity gas turbines is in its final stage. The mechanical engineering sector can now cover a significant share of the demand for oil and gas industry equipment.
Light industry is expanding. Russia's largest enterprise for the production of knitted fabrics opened in the Ivanovo Region. A modern high-tech textile production site is being built in the Nizhny Novgorod Region. Several large projects for the production of nonwovens were launched as well.
The pharmaceutical industry grew by more than 10 percent largely due to sweeping replacement of foreign products with high-quality domestic medications. Last year, about 1,000 new medications and more than 3,000 Russian-made medical devices were registered, all of which was made possible by our researchers, scientists and companies.
We support the development of domestic software, which is gradually replacing industrial foreign-made software. Almost 80 percent of foreign solutions now have domestically produced counterparts. We are focusing on quality now. This year will see major enterprises complete the launch of pilot projects for the introduction of Russian computer-aided design systems, as well as products that are required for data and process management.
Creating and implementing our own technologies and solutions is among our top priorities. It is important to minimise our dependence on imported equipment, parts and components, and software.
To finance this work, we expanded and revived a broad spectrum of support mechanisms. The Industrial Development Fund has a central role in this regard. It offers preferential financing terms for projects to develop high-technology products, create new manufacturing sites, equipment leasing, machine building, and digital transformation.
Last year, we injected an additional 120 billion roubles into its capital, bringing its total assets to 167 billion. This enabled the fund to grant a record-high number of loans. Machine engineering companies, as well as enterprises from the chemical, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries were the top users of these funds. They have already put these resources to effective use.
To enable various sectors of the economy to promote innovation, we need businesses, research institutions, the government and development institutions to work together. We have designated several high-technology sectors in which the Government, leading businesses and state corporations will combine their efforts with a focus on developing specific product lines. The state will help develop them, while it will be up to the companies to bring them to the market.
Start-ups have a special role to play in this regard. Business owners can come up with new, forward-looking ideas. We need to help materialise them. We created an innovation support registry for startups so that they spend less time applying for government aid and waiting for it to arrive. As of today, this registry contains 11,000 companies and almost 1,000 of them have already benefited from state support.
Smaller companies can also benefit from grants to implement AI solutions and fine-tune their products to meet customer demand. We offer preferential three-percent interest rates for projects to develop SMEs.
Last year, the President proclaimed the Decade of Science and Technology, and we tasked our educational system with helping us achieve technological sovereignty.
We have updated the list of vocational training degree programmes, and opened 71 education and manufacturing clusters as part of Proffessionalitet (vocational training degree), a project to promote vocational training. More than 150,000 students have already joined it.
We have embarked on a journey to establish advanced engineering schools across 30 universities so that their undergraduate and postgraduate students, and now school students, too, can all contribute to delivering on the objectives our companies have. On 1 September, over 2,000 young people started their studies at these institutions.
I would like to thank Valentina Matviyenko for her important proposal to bring together science, education and the employment market. In February 2023, the President signed the federal law you, Ms Matviyenko, initiated to enable Russian research centres to offer specialist degree programmes and give their students hands-on experience. This was a very important undertaking.
We will continue the Priority 2030 academic leadership programme. More than 120 universities have taken part in it. Last year, we earmarked about 30 billion roubles to create student technology parks and business incubators.
World-class campuses of 25 universities will attract talented young people. Efforts to build eight of them are already underway in Tomsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, and Kaliningrad.
We have selected another nine projects: in Arkhangelsk, Veliky Novgorod, Ivanovo, Perm, Samara, Tyumen, Khabarovsk and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, as well as at the Sirius federal territory.
All of this is to ensure that students, including foreign students, can study and live in comfortable conditions. And this is when our students were expelled in unfriendly states simply for being from Russia. We fast-tracked their enrollment into our universities: 2,500 people in total.
Now on to another priority, digitalisation.
The largest foreign software suppliers left Russia because of pressure from Western countries. Under these conditions, we have strengthened support for our developers in order to ensure the self-sufficiency of domestic digital solutions in line with the President’s instructions.
Preferential loans for IT enterprises are provided. We exempted them from on-site tax audits and simplified public procurement procedures. They will pay zero income tax for the next two years. As a result, the number of accredited IT companies has grown. At the same time, the sale of products and services in the industry increased by 22 percent last year.
We had a detailed discussion of solutions for the IT industry during the previous report. There were a lot of questions. I gave instructions to create a single domestic application store. The most important element. Today RuStore has already been launched and replaced its foreign analogues. Over eight million people have installed it to download various banking services and games, as well as visit online cinemas and online stores. Over 18 million downloads in total.
New, user-friendly forms of purchasing goods are also emerging based on advanced technologies. Over the past three years, the number of registered companies, for example, in the field of e-commerce, has increased 13 times. This is an excellent indicator.
The ninth priority was the development of transport and logistics infrastructure. Over 22,000 km of roads were built and repaired in Russian regions, including new ones, and 176 million square metres of tracks were laid, which is 16 million squares metres more than previous achievements. We improved on last year’s record results.
And we reached our goal on regional road standards two years earlier than the deadline set by the President. More than 50 percent of them have been brought up to code. This means that residents, tourists, carriers will now be able to travel much faster and deliver goods to the desired points along the Central Ring Road in the Moscow Region, and bypassing Yekaterinburg, Maikop, Anapa and Kaluga. The Arkhangelsky bridge in Cherepovets was put into operation, as well as two more bridges - road and rail - across the Amur River.
The first 107 km of the M-12 Vostok motorway from Moscow to Kazan have already been built.
The supply of Crimea was never interrupted, despite the terrorist attack, and attempts to cut off the peninsula from the rest of Russia. Let me note that the road section of the bridge was completely restored in a remarkably short time: four and a half months.
Marat Khusnullin, Vitaly Savelyev and all other colleagues were active in working with Governor of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov.
The Government pays special attention to the Northern Sea Route, too. We have made navigation safer and more effective by creating a new navigation management system. This, in turn, helped us increase shipments along the Arctic routes. In 2022, they exceeded the target of 34 million tonnes by 2 million tonnes.
Creating transport and logistics corridors is another important element in our effort to open up our economy.
Promoting integration within the EAEU, as well as with partner countries, is another priority. We have continued reinforcing cooperation with friendly countries who share our views and values. Attempts to shut us out of the global economic space through sanctions failed.
We have been proactive in expanding cooperation with our partners within the Commonwealth of Independent States. Last year, Russia’s trade with them increased by 6 percent.
Of course, cooperation within the Eurasian Economic Union has been a priority for us. Here, we performed quite well despite all the geopolitical tension. Our mutual trade was up 14 percent last year.
Within the Union State of Russia and Belarus, as well as the EAEU, we focused on making our economies more resilient against the backdrop of the unprecedented sanctions imposed on our two countries. We took joint anti-crisis measures, which helped prevent shortages of equipment, food, medicines, and medical equipment.
To increase trade even more, we are building an independent financial system within our union. We also agreed to increase the share of national currencies in our trade. Last year, they accounted for 85 percent, which is a very good result. We have plans to have even more trade in our national currencies.
Overall, promoting international cooperation remains a major policy objective for us.
Colleagues,
Russia derives its strength from its regions. For this reason, developing them is among our priorities. We offer them new economic development opportunities. Many regions have had to make serious spending adjustments. Of course, the federal government was there to assist them, cognizant as we are that all local projects must be fulfilled for the people to benefit from them.
Over the past year, the Government has channelled almost 4 trillion roubles to the regional budgets, which is almost 10 percent above the level we had the year before that. This helped redirect these funds towards building infrastructure and social facilities.
Of course, the situation varies depending on the region. They may have different backgrounds, and quite often their economies have little in common. And yet, in most of the regions, tax and non-tax budget revenue increased by 13 percent, on average, to almost 15.5 trillion roubles. We have been keeping a close eye on these indicators. However, this is just the overall picture. We do understand this. We saw the biggest drop in the most well-off, oil producing regions.
The overall economic environment played its part, too. Today, we have additional opportunities for assisting all regions.
We devised a mechanism enabling us to substantially ease the financial burden on the regions. In keeping with the Presidential instructions, we stepped in to replace market borrowings with their high interest rates by offering budget loans for a total amount of 720 billion roubles. Government loans enabled the regions to save over 65 billion roubles on debt servicing.
The Russian regions have also had the opportunity to restructure budget loans they took out to cover their deficits. Last year, we deferred their payments under these loans.
Thanks to these resources, the regions can do more to support people and launch new projects for making their own economies stronger.
There are many things we must do on the ground. We need to build a modern utilities infrastructure, upgrade housing, as well as heating and water supply systems, and develop public transit.
It is for this purpose that we developed and put forward a series of financial tools, including infrastructure budget loans and bonds worth over 1 trillion roubles. There is also the programme for utility infrastructure upgrades financed from the National Wealth Fund for an amount of 150 billion roubles.
These were all Presidential initiatives, and we delivered on them. With them, the regions will receive additional resources for delivering on their current agendas and creating better living conditions for our people.
We continue implementing 10 programmes tailored to the specific needs of the least developed regions in terms of their socioeconomic indicators.
Last year, this helped create over 10,000 jobs and attract over 75 billion roubles in investment.
Last weekend, we marked an important day: the ninth anniversary of the reunification of Crimea and Sevastopol with Russia. They are an inseparable part of our country today. At the instruction of the President, the Government is taking measures to improve the quality of life on the peninsula and implementing a social and economic development programme.
In 2022, some 300 kilometres of roads were repaired as part of the programme. Over 1,500 additional places in kindergartens were created.
The number of investors in the region has also increased. For every rouble of concessions provided to the members of the free economic zone, there are three roubles of private investment, which amounts to some 300 billion roubles. We will continue this work.
Much was done to improve the quality of life for the residents of the Far East and the Arctic zone in the past year despite all external challenges.
The main issue is related to providing them with better living conditions. The most popular initiative there is the Far Eastern Mortgage programme. Last year, almost 26,000 families took part in it. We have extended it to six years at the instruction of the President.
Last summer, we launched another important project, the Far Eastern Quarter. We discussed it in detail during the working trip to the Trans-Baikal Territory. It includes comprehensive construction of the necessary social infrastructure in the cities of the macro region.
We have already selected seven pilot sites where over two million square metres of housing will be built.
Two years ago, in your report to the State Duma, you raised the issue of what we should do to prevent people from leaving the Far East. Insufficient infrastructure is one of the obvious reasons. We have a good tool called the Joint Subsidy, and we have also expanded it to the Arctic. This mechanism provided the residents of Far Eastern regions with 1,200 improved public spaces last year alone. We also opened a cardiovascular centre in Yakutsk. Komsomolsk-on-Amur received the largest local sport facility, and numerous other facilities have opened. All of them have been created so that our people can access modern services.
People in the Far East consider regional flights to be an important issue. Several years ago, they had trouble reaching neighbouring cities, due to prohibitive prices. In 2021, we established the Joint Far Eastern Air Company on the basis of the Avrora air carrier and launched a flight subsidies programme. In the past 12 months, 355,000 people have taken advantage of this programme. As instructed by the President, we have extended it by another three years, we have nearly doubled the number of routes, helping people who are often unable to afford air tickets, by keeping airline ticket prices down.
At the request of my colleagues, I cannot help but touch upon issues linked with the development of the North Caucasus. Its regions have managed to boost economic growth rates by implementing ground-breaking projects in the region’s key macro-economic sectors, including construction of modern greenhouse facilities, and the development of tourism and agro-industrial clusters.
We have already attracted about 200 billion roubles’ worth of private investment for implementing these projects, and the federal district’s residents have benefited from over 4,000 new jobs.
Efforts to meet economic demand for financial resources and tools are the 12th, but far from last, priority for us. I have already listed many measures, while discussing our efforts to support various sectors, to facilitate investment activity, the business climate and to support our regions. Last year, all these measures made it possible to create new pivotal economic sectors. However, our work continues unabated. We should be clear-eyed: the foreign pressure on Russia will not diminish.
Colleagues,
Last autumn, the President signed an executive order establishingthe Government Coordination Council on the needs of the Russian Federation Armed Forces, other troops, military formations and bodies. It has been charged with a package of issues related to material supplies for our defenders and also with improving coordination between the federal authorities and the regions.
The real requirements of our security-related agencies have been quickly checked against the production facilities, and priority supplies and targets have been coordinated. Producing enterprises have been helped to develop cooperation with other producers.
This created conditions for supplying the much-needed body armour, helmets and first aid kits, as well as for meeting the requirements of the Defence Ministry and other security-related agencies in weapons, military equipment and other products they need. Decisions on some outstanding issues are taken very quickly.
To meet the requirements, which have increased many times over, our defence enterprises are expediting the implementation of investment projects. Funding for this has been earmarked. The objective is to create new facilities and purchase additional equipment and production tools.
We have reshaped the operating schedule, introducing three working shifts at defence enterprises where this as necessary. We have expanded industrial cooperation, including by joining forces with privately owned companies and attracting research institutes.
I would like to say that we are grateful for your active involvement in the drafting of the necessary laws. Thank you.
Amendments have been made very quickly to regulations on contract service, and special economic measures have been taken to ensure the implementation of the state defence order. In particular, we have increased the number of acquisitions from sole suppliers, simplified the pricing mechanism, and tightened responsibility for refusal to sign contracts.
We have seriously increased the production of the most in-demand weapons and military equipment. We have formulated a package of support measures for the mobilised citizens and their families.
We do not take the mobilised citizens’ incomes into account when calculating means-tested benefits to preserve the social benefits their families receive. Their children enjoy priority in the school and kindergarten placement system, are the first to receive recreation camp vouchers and have a special quota for bachelor’ and master’s degree programmes free of charge.
The length of service during the special military operation will be doubled for the purpose of calculating the insurance pension. There are also programmes of medical rehabilitation and psychological assistance and treatment at military hospitals.
It is also important to create conditions under which mobilised citizens will continue to receive an income from their private business. They can remain owners of their business. The deadlines for tax, insurance and other obligatory payments and for submitting business declarations and financial reports have been extended for mobilised businesspeople. They can also apply for a payment holiday and a lease deferral.
Colleagues,
Last October, the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions became an integral part of Russia. The President asked us to ensure their integration in the single socio-economic space of our country.
We launched a pension and social security system there with regular payments and benefits. I want to thank all members of parliament for this work. The relevant legislative acts were promptly adopted by the State Duma and approved by the Federation Council.
This decision is very important for over 1.5 million people who started receiving pension benefits, and 1 million citizens who received social benefits and monetary compensation.
We provided support to the people whose homes were destroyed or damaged, and to those who were injured as a result of hostilities.
Last year, we started to restore infrastructure in the new regions to help them return to normal life and activities.
We have already completed work on almost 8,500 facilities, including residential buildings, roads, utilities, outpatient clinics, hospitals, and schools.
The construction of a water pipeline from the Rostov Region will be completed next week, which will improve the quality of drinking water in the Donetsk People's Republic.
We have repaired about 900 km of roads, including the route connecting the new regions with Crimea, as well as the main gas pipelines. As many as 3,500 power grid facilities to bring light to people's homes. All such utilities are already technologically integrated into the unified gas supply and energy systems.
Our next task is to reset the economies of these regions. The key industries in Donbass are metallurgy, machine building, coal mining, and the chemical industry. The agricultural sector can also become one of the main drivers of development and employment in the future, especially in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.
Many industrial and agricultural enterprises stopped operating there. It is necessary to restore the main production facilities, and, where possible, to carry out a radical modernisation. All the basic mechanisms of state assistance to industry that are already operating in our country will help resolve the issues to some extent.
We will supplement them with special tax incentives. Tomorrow, at a Government meeting, we will consider a draft law on creating a free economic zone in these constituent entities and submit it to the State Duma. We count on your support here.
The President set a goal for the Government: to bring the new regions to the nationwide level in all respects within eight years. In the near future, we will complete the programme of socio-economic development.
Now I will tell you about the areas on which we intend to concentrate our efforts this year.
The first priority is to provide the necessary assistance to our military. At the President’s instruction, the Government has begun creating a dedicated state fund for bringing targeted support to the families of fallen fighters and veterans of the special military operation, including legal, social, psychological and medical assistance, rehabilitation, as well as assistance in finding employment and getting an education.
They should not encounter problems with anything. For example, if a person needs cutting-edge medicines, medical devices or rehabilitation technology, it is very important to provide these things quickly, without delay.
The fund should begin operating within the next few months, literally everywhere throughout the country. These people have gone through a lot, and they need heightened attention and special care from the state. And it will be provided.
Colleagues,
There are a number of other key tasks that need to be addressed this year. All of them were outlined by the President in December. There are six of them.
The first of these priorities is to strengthen cooperation with our allies and find promising partners.
We believe that the development of trade, economic, scientific and technical cooperation with China is very important. Following the talks between President Vladimir Putin and President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping in Moscow, the two leaders adopted a joint statement on the development of practical cooperation between Russia and China in the medium term. As a follow-up, my colleague, Premier of the State Council of China Li Qiang, and I will soon approve Plan 2030, which will embrace all the main areas of cooperation with our Chinese partners.
This year, the Russian Federation is chairing the bodies of the Eurasian Economic Union. We plan to take measures to increase the number of joint projects in the energy sector, transport, and digital transformation. We will focus on creating alternative supply chains and improving our general investment climate.
To strengthen trade and cooperation ties, we need reliable transport corridors, which are going to be built based on our export and import needs. We will continue to develop the infrastructure of the North-South global corridor, as well as in the Azov-Black Sea and eastern operation domains, which are essential for supplying Russian goods to new markets.
The expansion of these corridors will boost international traffic over the next three years by more than 30 percent.
By the end of next year, we plan to increase the capacity of railways in the Eastern Operating Domain to 180 million tonnes.
Another crucial area of our activity this year remains the strengthening of our technological sovereignty. I spoke about it in detail earlier. We must ensure the presence of all the necessary products on the domestic market and their full inclusion in the economy.
We will continue implementing projects to release competitive products. First of all, in order to replace supplies from the unfriendly countries, we will create new value chains while at the same time supporting them with budget financing tools or a flexible customs tariff policy.
Within a month, we will prepare proposals on providing tax concessions for purchasing Russian-made high-tech equipment.
The President set the goal of increasing the output of processing industry products this year, as well as their share in GDP.
At the President’s initiative, we have launched the industrial mortgage. Concessional loans for a total of 2.5 billion roubles for purchasing production facilities have already been issued.
This year, as well as in the next two years, the volume of planned subsidies is estimated at 300 million roubles. There will be demand for industrial mortgages among industrial clusters. When we were making our trips around the country, the manufacturers asked for it almost everywhere. First, this is long-term money, and second, it is guaranteed demand. These are the two elements we worked with.
As the popularity of industrial mortgages grows, we will increase funding.
As of now, given the high demand, we have made a decision on additional funding. In the nearest future, an additional 1 billion roubles will be allocated. We will expand this mechanism to the construction, modernisation and renovation of production facilities. Almost all of them are in poor condition.
I want to reiterate that starting January, we have launched a new regime for industrial clusters. One billion roubles have been allocated for expanding the output of priority products. If this tool proves to be popular over the course of the year, we will increase financing to 5 billion roubles, which we have set aside in the budget.
We will also partially compensate the expenses for research and development. Special attention will be paid to the production of liquified natural gas, low and medium tonnage chemistry. These industries still depend on foreign technologies to a large extent. In the next three years, they will be provided with almost 37 billion roubles; 10 billion roubles will be allocated this year.
Technology must come to healthcare as well. We began developing innovative biomedical cell products and tissue engineering. We have selected promising projects that have passed preclinical studies and expert analysis. They will help treat major dermatological diseases and musculoskeletal and spinal cord disorders.
The Government submitted to the State Duma a draft law and, the day before yesterday, the Duma reviewed it in the first reading. It provides for an expedited system for circulating such products and the specifics of their use when custom-making them for patients. Colleagues, I’m looking forward to your continued support.
We will increase the production of blood plasma-derived medications. Their output grew by almost 20 percent last year. Over the next two years, we will triple plasma procurement to 600,000 litres per year in order to fully cover our needs and ensure our independence from foreign products. This was facilitated by the law you passed earlier. To implement it, the Government approved a breakthrough concept for promoting this industry.
It is important to stabilise the IPI within the next few years. We expect it to grow by about 2 percent in 2024.
Russia’s financial sovereignty is the third priority for this year. Access to Western resources has been closed down, thus giving us a good opportunity to continue to develop our own securities market and the banking sector, and to expand the toolset for bringing long-term money into the economy. We plan to increase long-term savings and the inflow of investment into the financial market. A single tax deduction will be introduced to increase the appeal of new mechanisms. Corresponding amendments to the legislation are under development.
We will encourage the fast-growing technology companies’ efforts to raise funds.
Fourth, we will continue to expand the necessary transport infrastructure throughout the country using the advanced financing mechanism where the regions receive the resources that were set aside in the budget for later periods in order to build motorways faster.
The sector is still facing many challenges. In order to effectively and consistently overcome them, we approved a five-year plan of roadwork. The total amount of funding stands at almost 13 trillion roubles. This sector hasn’t seen such a large-scale programme in the last 30 years.
This money will be used to build and bring up to code about 140,000 km of roads, including the core network, which bears the main flow of passenger and freight traffic.
I propose focusing on the road infrastructure that ensures access to social facilities. Its construction and renovation continue.
The regions need to create and restore mass transit routes that allow residents of remote areas to get to the hospital, cultural institutions, educational organisations and other important sites.
We will also increase infrastructure budget loans.
Another 250 billion roubles will be added to the already issued amount of one trillion roubles for renovating housing and utilities as well as for transport and social facilities, with 100 billion designated for our Far Eastern regions.
At the President’s instruction, the Government will allocate 50 billion roubles of budget loans for modernisation of public transport by using advanced technologies, and 15 billion roubles for oil boilers to be switched to biofuel. These amounts have already been formalised in legislation. Last week, the State Duma adopted the law which has been signed by the President.
Mr Volodin, Ms Matviyenko, thank you for your personal efforts in providing legislative support for the President’s initiative.
We have launched a comprehensive programme for utility infrastructure modernisation financed through the National Wealth Fund. Under the programme, 1,300 facilities will be built or renovated within the next two years, including engineering networks. This will substantially improve living conditions for over 19 million people in most Russian regions.
At the President’s instruction, additional 130 billion roubles are envisaged in the federal budget for this period to finance regional programmes for upgrading the utility infrastructure.
The fifth objective for this year is to improve the wellbeing of citizens, including by consistently increasing the monthly minimum wage at rates above the inflation level. At the President’s instruction, the minimum wage will be indexed by 18.5 percent starting 1 January 2024.
Particular attention is paid to employees in the public sector of the economy. Our school and university teachers, medical workers and other medical personnel, employees in the social and cultural sectors, as well as in science, should receive adequate pay for their hard work. To this end, we provide assistance to regions to bring their salaries in line with the President’s May Executive Order.
We will keep in place the existing measures of supporting the most vulnerable groups of citizens. Starting 1 April, social pensions will be increased, which will be in addition to the indexation carried out last June. This assistance is provided to citizens who lack the required years of service for receiving insurance pension. Within just one year, social pensions will be increased by more than 13.5 percent, which will allow for higher pension benefits for about 4 million people.
We are essentially improving the social protection system to provide support promptly and in full, in a convenient format without bureaucratic delays.
It is the state’s obligation to take care of citizens and prevent situations when people have to knock on every door to exercise their integral rights. This is why we created a new institution this year – the Pension and Social Insurance Fund. We introduced a unified social contribution rate. As a result, by 2025, sick leave, maternity and childcare allowances until the child reaches 18 months will increase by more than 50 percent. It was a very smooth integration. Ms Golikova and her colleagues did a meticulous job. Nobody even noticed the consolidation of the two funds – even though it was not easy.
For a regular person, the source of their pension or benefits and the agency in charge do not really matter. The important thing is that the payments arrive without delay. Entrepreneurs appreciate transparency and clarity of their contributions. The new Pension and Social Insurance Fund will take care of it by optimising and centralising all management and accounting.
In his Address to the Federal Assembly, the President instructed us to launch a special concessional rental housing programme for defence industry workers. Subsidised by the state, their rent will be significantly below the market. This opportunity will be available in the cities where defence is the backbone industry or where major industrial and research facilities are located.
Also in the next three years, we will allocate additional funding for housing certificates for young scientists.
I want to briefly speak about the migration policy. It is a crucial issue and a matter of domestic security. Speaking at an expanded meeting of the Interior Ministry Board recently, the President noted that it is important to review such matters in all their complexity and estimate what professionals and in which regions and industries are particularly in demand, and what are the qualification and skill requirements. All administrative procedures must be transparent. We will develop respective proposals and present them to the President.
Currently, the Government is working on an extremely important bill that will determine the state migration policy. All opinions must be taken into account to fulfil the tasks set by the President successfully.
At his instruction, we will also promptly take measures to move the applications for citizenship, permanent residency and work permits online and make the procedures as convenient as possible.
Now to the Government’s main objective, which is preserving the population. An important aspect of these demographic efforts is maternity and childhood protection.
We will continue to increase the effectiveness of compulsory healthcare insurance, making modern and quality medical services more accessible.
The President instructed us to draft proposals on improving assistance to families with children in need. We are developing an integral state support system for them, from pregnancy support to the time the child turns 17. We have been working on this system for the past two years. Now the work is done and this year, we will be able to launch a unified monthly maternity and childcare benefit, payable to about 10 million beneficiaries, both pregnant women and children aged 17 and younger.
Family support goes beyond relieving financial troubles. Every person must have access to the entire scope of life support conditions, including quality healthcare, excellent education, good business opportunities and convenient public services. We will continue addressing these matters together.
Colleagues,
Last year saw the start of a deep transformation of the world order. More and more countries come to realise that a fair world of the future is incompatible with the rules imposed by the collective West. Transition to multipolarity is gathering speed. Russia is at the cutting edge of this process.
We are experiencing fierce strategic competition. Essentially, we are fighting for the right to choose our own path based on our national interests and for the benefit of our people.
The year 2022 was a complicated period of adaptation and reinventing economic links. As I said at the beginning, the economy has now returned to its growth trajectory. It is important to protect its stability and engage all available resources to make our country even stronger.
The President set specific tasks to achieve this goal. I am confident that by working together, we will succeed.
Thank you. I will take your questions now.
