Page 48 - bne_March 2021_20210303

48 I Eastern Europe bne March 2021
country’s citizens. More immediately, the Kremlin needs some positive results before a crucial general election for Duma seats in September.
National Projects 2.0
The government has prepared a repackaging of the national projects programme, according to a report by The Bell on February 5.
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is celebrating his first anniversary in office with a new strategy of socio-economic development, and has developed a spe- cial plan to achieve the national goals set by the president. The government prom- ises to change the economy and business
that sets out the national projects action plan.
Teams have been set up to deal with the specifics, including: New Social Contract, Client-Oriented State, Aggressive Infrastructure Development, New High- Tech Economy, and National Innovation System, which correspond to five of the 12 tasks in the national projects. A working group headed by a specialised vice- premier is responsible for each segment.
A few details have leaked out from
the meeting. The National Innovation System team is headed by Gref, as well
as the co-founder of IBS IT Services, Russia’s answer to Germany’s SAP, Sergey
“needy”, who will have to be identified according to the “know your client” principle. Direct payments and provision of food for the poor should become the components of the new social contract. The materials do not say anything about aid to other categories of citizens in the context of the new social contract.
Law enforcement and judicial system will be reformed to improve confidence and the business climate. One of Russia’s biggest problems holding back faster eco- nomic growth is the fact that entrepre- neurs don't trust the courts and property rights remain weak. The upshot is that successful business people are very reluc- tant to invest and take a defensive posi- tion to protect existing businesses rather than taking expansionist positions to grow their businesses. This attitude acts as a brake on growth and once a business gets to the size where it is providing the owner a good living it stops growing.
Putin urged in 2019 to approach judicial and law enforcement reforms "carefully, without revolutions and without waving a sword." The Bell speculates that these reforms remain very sensitive and
a deep root and branch reform is not on the cards.
Another goal in the new look national projects programme is to reduce the state’s share in the economy and at the same time to use the potential of state- owned companies to "accelerate digital development” in an effort to make Russia welcoming for start-ups from all over the Former Soviet Union (FSU).
The "National Innovation System" is the development of IT and innovations, a favourite topic of Mishustin, and involves creating a favourable business environment for tech development and innovation. The plan documents seen by The Bell talk about the "model of Korean chaebols."
The new plan is also designed to address some of the problems with the existing programme. The head of the Audit Chamber and former Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin has been
an outspoken critic of the National Projects, constantly complaining they
“The national projects have been repackaged, renamed and broken into components”
conditions on the principle of “change and disrupt” and has invited experts like Sber CEO and author of Russia’s first economic reform programme in 2000 German Gref to contribute.
Shortly after Putin took over as president in 2000 he brought in Gref, an academic, to draw up reforms dubbed “the Gref Plan” that began
the process of remaking the Russian economy. Unpopular with the elite at the time, the plan was able to make the first round of changes, entirely backed by Putin’s personal authority, although it ran out of steam after a few years.
Now the government is attempting
to re-start the reforms yet again, and kicked off the effort with a meeting chaired by Mishustin on January 27, The Bell reports, citing two government sources involved.
The new strategy was also reported by Vedomosti, without references
to the source of information. The newspaper reported that the goal of the meeting was to determine ways of fulfilling the goals set out last July in a presidential decree "On the national development goals of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030"
www.bne.eu
Matsotsky and Alexander Galitsky, founder of Almaz Capital Partners, a leading Russian investment fund.
Boris Kovalchuk, the CEO of state- owned power company Inter RAO and the son of Yuri Kovalchuk, co-owner of Rossiya Bank, have been named the top experts for the New High-Tech Economy project, The Bell reports.
The Bell reports that the plan’s documents are full of ideas from the tech sector. The kick-off meeting is called “kick-off” (as a borrowed word from English) in brackets. Mishustin was appointed Prime Minister after transforming the tax service by, among other things, overseeing a hugely successful overhaul of the IT system. Clearly Putin is hoping Mishustin can do for the whole government what he has already done for the tax service.
The national projects themselves have been repackaged, renamed and broken into components.
The Bell reports that the three most interesting blocks include: The “New Social Contract”, which envisages the introduction of a universal family allow- ance – not for everyone, but only for the