It's just a line in the budget

The government cannot learn how to use the investment fund

Critics of the idea of ​​direct public investment (the current Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin especially succeeded in this in his time) may feel like prophets. Yesterday at a government meeting, the obvious became clear: the government has not yet learned how to manage an investment fund, specially created for direct government investments in particularly significant projects.

It all started with the burning Olympic topic. Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov will apparently be dreaming about Sochi soon. He had already spent almost a week worrying about the Olympic construction, which, even before it began, seemed to be “stormy .” From Sochi, Mr. Zubkov moved to Yerevan, where he activelypurchased Armenian cement . And yesterday at a cabinet meeting he again spoke primarily about the 2014 Olympics. I ordered the ministers to include it as the first line in their work schedule. He promised to ask strictly: “Every stage of the work is taken under strict control.” He didn’t allow me to relax: “The organizational period is over - it’s time to start work.” And I personally decided to devote myself entirely to the “Sochi breakthrough.” He announced that he would hold a monthly meeting of the Presidium of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation on Sports, including on-site visits, including skiing. Indeed, Mr. Putin is not the only one to take the rap. However, in May Russia should have a new prime minister - Vladimir Putin. He, apparently, will hold these or new ministers to the utmost severity, and will also go skiing with them.

The ministers took Prime Minister Zubkov's Sochi instructions for granted and moved on to discussing the main issue on the official agenda - the fate of the investment fund. It turned out that things here are not so rosy. The budget line is large in volume. As the prime minister said, “the money is serious.” But they are used to a minimum. Mr. Zubkov recalled that the fund was founded in 2005. And he called 2006 and 2007 “lost” years. “The effectiveness of the use of funds was low,” he noted. Last year, out of 265 billion rubles. the investment fund spent 28.3 billion, with only 1.8 billion spent on projects itself (the rest of the funds went to capitalize the venture fund and the information technology financing fund). Further, the prime minister does not want to tolerate such practice, or rather, its absence. He called for “work to begin without delay.” Literally, like the Olympic construction site in Sochi.

“Our task is to clearly distribute budget resources for each year, establish high-quality monitoring of the process, and attract private investors,” said the prime minister. The call turned out to be unified - for all occasions in the life of the government.

Deputy Minister of Regional Development (who previously worked at the Ministry of Economic Development) Maxim Bystrov tried to explain what was so new that his department came up with, which in September last year seized the authority to manage the investment fund from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade so that this resource would finally become in demand. The wording of the fund's regulations was new. Specifically, the possibility of federal money participating in regional projects.

We are talking about co-financing infrastructure development. For example, the construction of a certain road that leads to a certain object designed by an investment fund. The federal center gives money in the form of subsidies to the region, the region, together with private business, co-finances the project and, upon completion of construction, registers the road as its property. In general, the Ministry of Regional Development simultaneously wants to solve its functional problems in addition to managing the investment fund.

As for the unused funds of the fund, Mr. Bystrov said that there are no problems, because there is no money. “This is just a line in the budget, and not a bag on which “Investment Fund” is written,” the official explained.

Vera KUZNETSOVA