Dmitry Medvedev’s opening remarks:

Ladies and gentlemen, we have the drafts of two federal programmes on the agenda and we will continue reviewing them as agreed. To begin with, I’ll say a few words about the first one. It is aimed at developing industry and making it more competitive. This is a long and serious document consisting of 17 sub-programmes. Its goal is to support key industries and determine an effective industrial state policy until 2020. We have joined the WTO and are deepening integration between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in the Customs Union. Competition for the leading positions in the world is bound to intensify. New industrial sectors are emerging; the geography of industrial centres and industrial supply chains is changing. We must rationally use the potential of our own market, streamline the load of our existing capacities, expand our export opportunities and, in general, make our plants and factories more competitive. These are difficult tasks but they can be resolved.

The ideology of the programme implies a phased reduction in direct funding of industries by the state. The programme emphasises encouraging demand, creating an innovative infrastructure and integrating the efforts of the state and development institutes. The latter implies the formation of joint research and engineering centres in promising areas of cross-sector industrial development.

One more important goals of the programme is to remove excessive barriers and create favourable conditions for bringing innovative products to the market. Technical regulation and standardisation are key elements in this respect. We continue our work on tailoring our national standards and classifiers to international rules. We are working on this but still have many decisions to make on this score. We must develop, introduce and patent more kinds of technology.

By 2020 the share of budget funding of the programme is expected to reach a bit less than 15% (about 14.2%), or around 500 billion roubles. The main source is the funds of the companies involved, and they are expected to amount to some three trillion roubles. In this context, the Government must support the decisions that would improve the investment climate and allow enterprises to carry out their long-term plans, build new production lines and upgrade existing ones.

The draft programme has been discussed with professionals and experts, and in the Open Government. Now the second programme setting the guidelines for forestry development until 2020. I will not list the types of forests, forested lands and our tasks – you know all about this. But to realise our special potential, our special responsibility to the Russian and global population, we must modernise the sector, raise its organisational, technological and engineering level, strengthen regional forest management bodies, strengthen forest control and supervision.

All forests should have a description, they should be included in the registry and in the cadastre. This work is not being done as quickly as needed (it covers only 42%) so far, therefore it is necessary to advance and issue the needed legislation. And of course it is necessary to strengthen the sector’s personnel potential. In the past ten years, the number of researchers in the forestry has fallen by 80%. Our objective is to change the situation in forest science and education through a state programme.  

The programme will be implemented within three years; its funding totals almost 526 billion roubles, including 256 billion in federal funds and some 67 billion from regional budgets and about 200 billion from non-budget sources.

The figures indicating the degree of the implementation of the state programme – this is data on the current situation in forests, including the data on the declining scale of tree deaths and conservation of Russia’s forest land. Unfortunately, artificial reforestation compensates for only a quarter of our annual loss – we can replant approximately 17% of what we lose every year due to wildfires and other natural disasters.

At the same time, it is necessary to increase logging and budget revenues from logging, but this is possible only with the intensive and rational use of resources. We have not succeeded in this area: many foreign countries, our neighbours, have achieved much higher indicators in these areas, their forest management is much better.

Target figures, these indicators, will be developed for each region – and this is important. These indicators will allow for the unbiased evaluation of how efficiently programme measures are being implemented and goals are being met.  

Also, a few words on the wildfires that destroy our forests each summer. It is necessary not only fight the wildfires (which is obvious) but also provide for wildfire prevention. We created and are creating in each region special units, fire-fighting equipment and small aircraft. But in any case, the cost of this will be recouped because by reducing the number of wildfires, we not only preserve the forest and save lives, we also save a lot of money. 

Today our meeting is attended by the heads of two regions, the Republic of Udmurtia and the Kostroma Region. I also want to hear their proposals on the state programme under discussion. These are serious, future-oriented issues, and they affect the comprehensive development of their territories, and other territories as well.

Let’s get to work.

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