Meeting on implementing the initiatives of Russia’s socioeconomic development through to 2030

RUSSIA, January 25 - Agenda: implementation of initiatives on construction, digital transformation, sports, science and education.

Excerpts from the transcript:

Mikhail Mishustin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

Today, we are starting a series of meetings where we will discuss the implementation of the strategic initiatives for Russia’s socioeconomic development. We will review the first results achieved last year and our plans for this year.

The Government prepared these initiatives at the President’s instructions. They were endorsed last October. In all, there are 42 initiatives that are divided into six key sections: the social sphere, construction, environmental protection, digital transformation, technology breakthroughs, and a state for the people.

Before being adopted, these initiatives were subjected to the broadest discussion with representatives from the Federal Assembly, the regional authorities, experts at the Public Chamber, the Russian Popular Front and the business community in general. The Government thoroughly analysed them with the State Council to coordinate the necessary actions at the federal, regional and municipal levels.

Colleagues,

Implementing these initiatives is now a priority requiring our joint efforts. Each of them resolves specific goals to improve living standards and develop the socioeconomic sphere.

These Government initiatives are a powerful impetus for national development. They supplement existing mechanisms for reaching the national goals set forth by the President for the next decade. They make this work more productive and generally boost the ability of the Russian economy to take on external challenges.

We will carry out all of them in the form of federal projects. The allocation of serious funding from the federal budget and the National Wealth Fund will be required for implementation over the next three years. With this aim in view, we have created a procedure for managing these funds and have drafted methodological instructions for selecting projects. In addition, we plan to attract private investment.

We have defined clear-cut, understandable and expected results for each initiative with two planning horizons – up to 2024 and the next one, up to 2030. This will allow us to evaluate the efficiency of our efforts in every area.

To maintain control and achieve the planned goals, we have appointed personally responsible officials that are not below the deputy minister level.

The work to carry out these initiatives, which are part of the integral plan for reaching our national goals, is already underway. The ministries and departments concerned approved the necessary federal projects before the end of last year. This allowed the responsible parties to promptly receive the funds within the established limits. All data and parameters are being monitored to enhance the efficiency of the decisions and actions by the federal and local authorities. This creates an objective and comprehensive picture of the current situation.

I would like to emphasise the need for continuous communication with everyone involved, all interested people. It is particularly important to receive prompt feedback from our people to respond in a timely manner to their needs and requests as the President has said many times.

Colleagues,

Today we will review 14 initiatives in four areas: construction, digital transformation, sports, science and education.

First, I would like to listen to specific reports on what has already been done in these areas and discuss in detail our plans for the near term.

My deputies – Marat Khusnullin and Dmitry Chernyshenko – will report on this in more detail.

Let’s start with construction. This is a very important area. The speed and quality of work in construction directly affects the condition of the infrastructure and living standards. So, we need to simplify, as much as possible, the ability of people to build their own home. They should not find it difficult to procure a plot of land or connect to the utility networks. Mortgages should become more affordable. Finally, we need to help businesses reduce the time and funding necessary for building new facilities.

Marat Khusnullin: Mr Mishustin, colleagues, 2021 was a good year for housing and road construction which, among other things, stems from consistent implementation of the socioeconomic development initiatives.

In total, we have six such initiatives in the construction area including Cities of Great Opportunity and Revival of Small Residential Communities, National Spatial Data System, My Private Home, Mobile City, New Construction Rhythm, and Infrastructural Menu. These initiatives are tightly interrelated and complement each other. Their top priority is to create infrastructure for the people. I will briefly describe each one for you.

The country’s growth points, including urban metro areas and individual reference communities are to be identified as part of the Spatial Development Strategy. Our efforts in different development areas must be linked and synchronised. We included this bloc of issues in the Cities of Great Opportunities and Revival of Small Residential Communities initiative.

Last year, as part of this initiative, we revised the list of urban metro areas for further expansion of infrastructure using the infrastructure menu and ensured the adoption of regulations on implementing the mechanism for the integrated development of territories across all constituent entities.

Plans for this year include creating and operationalising the Institute of Spatial Planning, which will provide expertise when drafting urban planning documentation for large cities and urban metro areas. There are plans to approve and start implementing long-term metro area development plans. This year, we will put together a list of key communities scheduled for infrastructure development.

This initiative is designed to achieve the Improving the Quality of the Urban Environment by 50 Percent benchmark which is part of the national goal, “Comfortable and Safe Living Environment.” Work to achieve this indicator will unfold both in urban agglomerations and small towns alike by way of conducting a unified urban policy, implementing infrastructure projects and projects for the integrated development of urban areas.

We are using the National Spatial Data System initiative to create a tool for the country's spatial development. We have completed an experiment to create a single information resource in four pilot regions. Two information systems - GIS for the country’s electronic map and the Federal Spatial Data Portal - have been developed and put into operation. Drone centres have been created to carry out supervisory activities.

Much attention is being given to the digital transformation of the activities of the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography (Rosreestr) and cutting the time involved in providing services. This year, we will ensure that all of Rosreestr’s popular services are provided through the public services portal. The time for cadastral title registration will be reduced to three days. We plan to see that the processing time for 90 percent of online applications for mortgage registration will have been processed in one day by 2024. The regulatory timeline for the provision of land plots will be reduced by 25 days. As planned, 100 percent of Rosreestr services will be available online by 2030. The time involved in the provision of electronic services will be reduced to one day and down to one minute for select services.

The activities under this initiative will help achieve the Comfortable and Safe Living Environment national goal, in particular, to improving the living conditions of at least 5 million families annually by 2030 and increasing the volume of housing construction to at least 120 million square metres per year.

We are developing individual home construction as part of the My Private Home initiative. This initiative is very important. More than half of all respondents, according to the pollster VCIOM, want to move to their own private house. In 2021, single family housing construction received a boost when a law was passed regulating such projects as part of low-rise residential developments. The escrow account mechanism was extended to such projects to allow for shared financing, similar to blocks of flats. The procedure to connect new private homes to the gas system has been significantly simplified. Preferential mortgage programmes have been extended to private homes, work is underway to create databases of available land plots, and procedures to provide such plots have been simplified, too.

This year, we plan to create a digital library of standard individual home projects, link the database of available properties with digital maps at the unified electronic cartographic framework of Rosreestr when they are ready, establish uniform requirements for the provision of government services for individual construction projects and make sure they are provided digitally. We will arrange mortgages for individual housing construction, including non-contracted construction.

The results of this initiative will have a direct impact on achieving the Comfortable and Safe Living Environment national goal, in particular on achieving important indicators by 2030 – improving living standards for at least 5 million families and building up to 120 million square metres of housing per year.

Last year was one of the most successful in launching individual housing construction. We will update the statistics in the next few days.

The Mobile City initiative aims to improve the quality of transport services for people living in big cities and extended urban areas. In 2021, recommendations were developed and approved for optimising transport systems in major conurbations; 477 new buses and trolleybuses were supplied to 14 cities with co-financing from the federal budget.

In 2022, by March 1, we will approve a unified programme for the development of public transport, at the President’s instruction. Plans for this year include the approval and updating of regional regulations, in particular, comprehensive programmes for the development of transport and the optimisation of parking space.

We are drafting project documentation to upgrade tram infrastructure. Thanks to budget loans, we plan to launch large construction projects, including the Teatralnaya metro station in Samara, the extension of the Avtozavodskaya metro line in Nizhny Novgorod, and the tram in Chelyabinsk. In total, thanks to the Infrastructural Menu for public transport, we approved infrastructure budget loans totalling over 160 billion roubles for projects in 20 regions.

By 2030, we plan to upgrade 100 percent of higher-capacity buses and 80 percent of trams in urban agglomerations. In eight metropolitan areas, we plan to launch commuter trains on Russian Railways’ track and modernise up to 80 percent of the tram infrastructure.

The implementation of the initiative is aimed at achieving the Comfortable and Safe Living Environment national goal and the indicator “Improving the Quality of the Urban Environment by 50 percent.”

We are focusing on the administrative, professional and digital transformation of the construction industry. This general goal was set as part of the New Construction Rhythm initiative. The main emphasis here is on reducing the duration of the investment and construction cycle by at least 30 percent by 2024 and by at least 50 percent by 2030. With a reduction in the investment and construction cycle, facilities will be completed sooner, which means people will receive new schools, hospitals, kindergartens and roads much sooner. In addition, housing will be built faster, the cost of construction will decrease, and thus will ease the financial burden on flat buyers.

In 2021, along with the State Duma and the Federation Council, large-scale work was carried out to improve the regulatory framework for the construction industry. In total, 27 key federal laws for the construction industry have been adopted – this includes about 150 significant amendments to the related legislation.

We have greatly simplified many procedures. The Government defined a universal list of 32 procedures for all capital construction projects instead of the previously existing 96 procedures. An exhaustive list of documents, information, materials, and authorisations necessary to implement capital construction projects was approved.

In 2020-2021, 6,800 mandatory requirements were changed to advisory status without compromising the quality of construction; 14 construction procedures are available on the Unified Portal of Public Services; the procedure for connecting facilities to all types of utility networks was unified, the procedure for transferring these networks was optimised; and the procedure for registration of rights and cadastral registration was simplified. To fully achieve this, we need to continue our systematic work at all levels of government, including private entities and municipalities.

More to be posted soon.

Dmitry Chernyshenko: Mr Mishustin, colleagues,

Allow me to report on six new federal projects that are based on the eight strategic initiatives approved by the President and endorsed by you in the field of sports, science and digital transformation. These initiatives are designed to expedite the implementation of our national goals.

Two federal projects on science are aimed at achieving technological sovereignty of the country. One of its indicators is Russia’s presence among the top ten countries in science. Our background work allows us to maintain this level for the time being, but the goals in our federal projects are more ambitious.

To raise engineering education to an entirely new level, we will create 30 advanced engineering schools. We will also develop entrepreneurship in universities in order to turn engineering developments into new high-tech solutions and use them to promote our national economy.

The Business Sprint initiative is aimed at radically changing the environment for sports. It uses the mechanisms of public-private partnership that will allow us to build in all cities public smart sports grounds within walking distance, as well as new bicycle, walking and skiing paths. This will help us reach sooner the goal set by the President – to increase the number of people who regularly do sports to 70 percent in 2030.

There is a whole section of digital transformation initiatives that address a package of tasks: train IT specialists (we are short of them, as you know); provide LTE coverage for residential areas with over 1,000 people and federal motor roads; organise prompt service for our people and companies; and digitise state services.

The overall sum of additional financing for the new initiatives will amount to 88.3 billion roubles up to 2024. The National Wealth Fund will pay 30.5 billion roubles just for the initiative to provide satellite internet access for individuals and companies. We will spend the funds that were already allocated in the federal budget for the Digital and Online Services initiative.Let us hear reports on two blocks of issues for each project. The first one is the implementation roadmap that shows which results people can expect and when. Let us review separately, as you said, what was accomplished in 2021 after the initiatives were adopted. Second, the current status in achieving the national goals, the acceleration effect: what changes can people will see, what tangible effects the initiatives will have for them.

I will start with the federal project of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Advanced Engineering Schools. Mr Mishustin, last Thursday, during your visit to the Voronezh Region, you went personally to aircraft manufacturing plant and the Sozvezdie Concern facility, where you heard that the industry is in need of engineers. You have also met talented engineers during other trips (as you recall, Penza Motors, or the Irkutsk Aviation Plant, or KAMAZ Engines in Naberezhnye Chelny), and the discussion focused on equipment manufacturing, of course, but it also emphasised the need for more engineering personnel and the demand today in practically all these areas. One example is genetics. Yesterday, the President’s instructions to create a mechanism for the prompt introduction of genetic technologies in industrial manufacturing were published. So, the Advanced Engineering Schools federal project is designed to eliminate the gap between the supply and demand for highly qualified personnel.

This began last August. We outlined the demands for advanced engineering schools. A pool of high-tech companies was formed as project partners including, among others, Rosatom, Russian Railways, Gazprom Neft and other companies with a high degree of competence. We created a group of experts to carry out a competitive selection process, which will be launched in April, in a couple of months.

As a result, we will create 30 new-generation engineering schools in partnership with high-tech companies. This partnership will transform the entire education process: students will learn from real cases and advanced schools will use real practitioners. At the same time, teachers will undergo advanced training in a long-term internship format in the technology business. We will also launch a counter process where we will involve working engineers in teaching at universities.

More to be posted soon.