The commission will decide who to give them to.

The White House will hold the first meeting of the government commission on import substitution - it will be headed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev - in May, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said yesterday. By this date, a law regulating its powers will be adopted. The commission will have two working groups - on the civil and defense industries, they will be headed by Deputy Prime Ministers Arkady Dvorkovich and Dmitry Rogozin. They will provide demand for replacement imports and control applicants' access to budget money, but the queue will be long. Only in the Industrial Development Fund, aimed at preliminary preparation of projects, with a volume of 20 billion rubles. During the quarter, 600 applications were submitted for 240 billion rubles.

Yesterday, Dmitry Medvedev, at a meeting on import substitution in Gorki, once again reminded the government that “this is not a situational event, but a strategic direction of work for the coming years - outside the context of any kind of sanctions.” A variety of support instruments have already been provided for domestic producers, including subsidies, co-financing of research, preferences in government procurement, but in some areas, the Prime Minister noted, the situation remains “extremely difficult.” Thus, the share of imports in the machine tool industry is about 90%, in the civil aircraft industry - more than 80%.

Imports will be squeezed out by quotas and a weak ruble

For more thorough control over the displacement of imports, the White House plans to form a special coordinating body in the near future - a government commission on import substitution. Let us recall that the prime minister first announced its creation at a government meeting on March 19, saying that he would head it personally. Two working groups will be formed within the new body, Arkady Dvorkovich said yesterday after the meeting, they will work on increasing the shares of the civil and defense industry in the Russian market. They will be headed by Mr. Dvorkovich himself and his colleague Dmitry Rogozin.

The powers of the new structure will be defined in amendments to the law on procurement of state-owned companies (FZ-223 “On the procurement of goods, works, services by certain types of legal entities”), which were prepared by the Ministry of Economy and have already been submitted to the State Duma. According to the document, the commission will select investment projects for inclusion in a special register - being included in it guarantees participants access to budget financing. The commission will also monitor the formation of procurement plans for state-owned companies, state corporations, legal entities with state participation of more than 50% and coordinate provisions on customer purchases and the inclusion in contracts of additional conditions aimed at the development of industry in the Russian Federation.

The final activity of the new body will be an assessment of the results of state policy in the field of procurement and investment projects that have received state support. Consideration of amendments to the law is scheduled for April. The first meeting, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, could take place as early as May, when the described amendments come into force.

How ruble devaluation hinders import substitution in agriculture

However, the authorities’ expectations from import substitution have already been formulated more specifically - by April 1, the plans of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (see Kommersant on April 2), the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Energy were approved. The import substitution program in agriculture was approved at the end of last year. According to Arkady Dvorkovich, we are talking about approximately 2.5 thousand projects, “which will be implemented in Russia with the aim of replacing those products and those types of equipment, technologies that are rational to replace, for which there can be a real commercial effect, where this is not the case.” artificial measure." Now the ministries will have to develop tools for implementing their programs before July 1. For failure to implement plans for import substitution, enterprises will bear responsibility, which one will be determined by deputies during the consideration of the mentioned amendments to the law on public procurement, Arkady Dvorkovich clarified yesterday.

The government places particular hopes on the Industrial Development Fund, through which preferential financing of projects will be provided. Let us note that this mechanism is provided for by the law “On Industrial Policy”, which was adopted in December last year and will come into force on June 30. According to the Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov, in the last three months alone the fund has received more than 600 applications totaling about 240 billion rubles. At the same time, the fund has only 20 billion rubles at its disposal, in connection with which the minister emphasized: “We will carry out a strict selection and focus on the highest priority projects.” However, it is possible that the number of applications will become significantly larger over time, which means that competition may increase significantly.

Evgenia Kryuchkova

Imports will be exchanged for money