Translated material
What goes around comes around
National projects are the main trump card of presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev
What goes around comes around. National projects are the main trump card of presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev. The New Times decided to look into the achievements and failures of the still first deputy prime minister of the government
It is believed that it was Dmitry Medvedev, while still the head of the Kremlin administration, who suggested the idea of developing "priority national projects" in the social sphere, which was first announced in the President's 2004 address to the Federal Assembly. In total, four areas were chosen: "affordable housing", "modern healthcare", "quality education" and, finally, "efficient agriculture". Already in the following year, 2005, relatively detailed action plans were developed for each of these areas, and the necessary funds (138 billion rubles, and taking into account extra-budgetary funds and state guarantees, about 180 billion rubles) were allocated to the federal budget for 2006. Dmitry Medvedev was transferred to the government to the post of First Deputy Prime Minister - to oversee national projects. It is difficult to think of a more advantageous position: generous funding and the social orientation of the activity, if successful, guaranteed people's love. However, the results turned out to be far from the stated goals, despite the fact that over the two years of the implementation of national projects, not 180, but already more than 430 billion rubles were allocated for them (see Chart 1).
affordable housing
The main problem of this project is that initially, during its implementation, the stake was placed on the development of mortgage lending, financing of lower mortgage rates, subsidies for the purchase of housing for young families and privileged categories of citizens - in other words, on measures that stimulate the already high demand in the real estate market. At the same time, absolutely nothing has been done either to liberalize the market for land intended for housing development, or to destroy the monopoly-corruption system that has developed in most Russian regions for allocating land allotments for housing construction. The result was not long in coming: real estate prices, which had already been growing at a fairly decent pace, last year, according to realtors, rose by 85-100%. Housing prices continued to rise (although not at the same rate) this year as well. If, prior to the start of the national project at the end of 2005, an average Russian family of three had to put aside everything they earned for 4.3 years in order to buy a standard apartment with a total area of 54 sq. m, then by the middle of this year this period has increased by exactly one year (see Chart 2). Then it got even more interesting. By the end of 2006, when it became clear that the national project was about to fail miserably, it was decided to direct the money directly to the construction of the so-called pilot projects for integrated housing development, for which 11 regions were selected. And this experience, as it turned out, led to consequences that were predictable, but not very expected by the leaders of the national project. The rapid rise in housing prices already stimulated housing construction, which already this year caused an acute shortage of building materials, primarily cement. For 11 months of 2007, according to Nikolai Koshman, chairman of the Association of Builders of Russia, the average cost of cement in the country increased by 140%. And if the implementers of the national project may not particularly think about their spending - they "master" state money not for the sake of profit - then private developers are faced with a sharp jump in construction costs, and a decrease in housing prices, at least in market conditions, is becoming less and less real. .
And even with the mortgage in the country, things are not quite as planned. According to RBC, at the end of November this year, the index of the mortgage rate market (IRIS) amounted to 12.56% for ruble loans, and 11.02% for dollar loans, which is higher than the target of 11% stated in the national project.
Modern healthcare
This is the most expensive and at the same time the most scandalous of the national projects. Already in 2006, a series of corruption scandals swept across the country related to holding tenders for the purchase of equipment and medicines within the framework of a national project. By November, the wave had reached Moscow, where a criminal case was opened on the fact of taking bribes on an especially large scale against the entire management of the Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund, including its director Andrei Taranov. This was not the end of the matter. In March of this year, a new scandal - this time involving the leadership of the Ministry of Health and Social Development - due to the imposition of certain drugs on patients and the simultaneous demand for "kickbacks" from pharmaceutical companies. The trail of corruption scandals and criminal cases continues to this day. Just last week, the Moscow representative office of Siemens was searched as part of a criminal case on misappropriation of budget funds for the supply of medical equipment.
However, theft and corruption are far from the main problem of this national project. In the end, equipment - albeit at inflated, sometimes at times, prices - is purchased, medical personnel, albeit not immediately, learn to work on it. Salaries in medical institutions are growing, and medicines, although not all of the promised ones, are being distributed. The problem is that these measures cannot replace the overdue systemic health care reform, which, despite the new equipment, is essentially obsolete.
Education and the countryside
The educational national project raises, perhaps, the least number of questions and complaints, although it has nothing to do with the ongoing education reform in the country. One of the main achievements of this project is the work on the total computerization of Russian schools. This good undertaking deserves full support, despite the obvious miscalculations in the development of this program. Thus, it did not occur to the authors of the project to immediately think about what software would be installed on school computers. Initially, no one allocated money for licensing. Only after several scandals with counterfeit programs in August of this year, a decision was made to finance the software. Then Medvedev said: “It was decided that licensed software will replace the ugly pirated content that is used in our schools. We have only 62 thousand schools, and, according to various sources, from 70 to 90% of the operating systems that are there are stolen operating systems. The first vice-premier did not seem to ask himself the question of where the schools - budgetary organizations - could get not "ugly pirated content", but politically correct licensed content, if there was no money in the budget for its purchase.
Finally, the last one is the agricultural national project. The logic of choosing agriculture as a priority sector of the economy is very vague. In the end, no one declared the goal of turning Russia into an agrarian power. However, from a formal point of view, it was precisely this national project that the country came closest to achieving the goal stated in the title. Agricultural production is becoming more efficient every year. However, the contribution to this process of the “smallest” national project from a financial point of view should not be overestimated. An attempt to bet on subsidizing loans for agricultural producers is a shot wide of the mark. In the country, an increasing market share is occupied by large agricultural holdings, which work quite successfully with commercial banks. As for small and medium-sized producers, the absence of a normal marketing infrastructure is often much more urgent for them.
Anatoly Kvashnin, presidential envoy to the Siberian Federal District: “In 2007, funding for priority national projects increased dramatically. In this regard, the number of detected violations of the law in spending funds has also increased. Thus, prosecutors in the federal subjects of the district for the whole of 2006 revealed 5.5 thousand violations of the law. And only for six months of 2007 - already 5.8 thousand.
Evgeny Gontmakher, head of the Center for Social Policy of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “In the social sphere, a sustainable effect, even in the case of an unmistakable policy, can be ascertained only after a few years. And even more so in healthcare, which has remained aloof from long overdue reforms. One can say as much as one likes that a set of unrelated momentary measures is the beginning of these reforms. But the basics of management dictate: before embarking on such a large-scale project, it is necessary to build a detailed program of action designed for more than one year and be sure to simultaneously launch independent monitoring of what is happening (this is where the scientific and expert community is needed like air). But something is not visible at least a medium-term program for the treatment of patients with Russian healthcare.”
Amount of funding for national projects for 2006-2007 (billion rubles)  |
Housing affordability index  |