Speaking at the meeting, Mr Zubkov raised the questions of replacing meat imports with domestic produce. "For the time being, there is a lot of imported meat in our domestic market, particularly from the EU countries and the American continent," he said. In his words, this shows what "colossal reserves" Russia has for developing domestic meat and poultry production. Mr Zubkov emphasized that Russian-made products are of higher quality.
Mr Zubkov said the Government will support companies that produce new highly efficient agricultural equipment. Having shared his impressions of new tractors produced by the company Avtospetsoborudovaniye, Mr Zubkov said: "This is a very interesting project. We must support such companies, and we plan to do that."
At the meeting, Mr Zubkov also spoke about the need to support consumer cooperatives in rural areas.
During his visit to the Novgorod Region, Mr Zubkov took part in the opening of a poultry plant at Belgrankorm-Veliky Novgorod. It will produce 42,000 tons of poultry a year. He said that this project has become the biggest for the region's agro-industrial complex in the post-war period.
Mr Zubkov believes that investors are still interested in agriculture because in the last few years the Government and the regional authorities have rendered substantial assistance to the agro-industrial complex. He said that recently the Government adopted a resolution to assist investors, agricultural companies and farmers to resolve housing problems in the countryside. The state will subsidize mortgage loans for agriculture workers, he specified.
Having said that the bill on trade will be completed in two weeks, Mr Zubkov emphasized: "Our immediate task is to make sure that relations between agricultural producers, processors, and retailers are more transparent, and that the balance of interests in this chain is observed." He noted that consumers should win as a result, because products "in shops should be less expensive than they are now."