Yesterday, the board of the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology approved the

Yesterday, the board of the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology approved the draft concept of the state policy for the development of science cities. “These cities should become the basis of the national innovation system; high-tech production of high-tech products that will be competitive not only in the domestic but also in the foreign market can be developed in them,” Deputy Minister of Industry Andrei Kulagin commented on the document yesterday. According to him, the draft concept involves simplifying the procedure for assigning the status of a science city to municipalities (so far there are only four of them in Russia: Dubna and Korolev in the Moscow region, Obninsk in the Kaluga region and Koltsovo in the Novosibirsk region) and improving the economic conditions for their development. Currently, the federal budget allocates 310 million rubles to support science cities. per year, but they are often spent not on science, but on financing public utilities. The concept assumes that a scientific and technological development program will be developed for each science city. At the same time, the developers proceeded from the fact that not only the state, but also private investors would want to invest money in science. The emphasis is on the adoption of the law “On Special Economic Zones,” a passionate advocate of which is not only its author, Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref, but also the head of the Ministry of Industry and Science, Ilya Klebanov. Their logic is simple: it is worth sacrificing some taxes for the sake of innovation. However, both departments and Russian regions still have to submit conclusions on the concept.

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 34 dated February 27, 2003, p. 2

Benefits in exchange for innovation