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At a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of the government, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov announced that the government had formed a list of 12 projects. He named four of them: "Machine tool construction and robotics", "New materials and chemistry", "Ensuring food security" and "New medical technologies". According to two Vedomosti sources familiar with the preparation of the pool of technological sovereignty projects, the list will also include: "Development of unmanned aviation" (actually launched in 2024), "Development of the space industry", "Atom and new energy sources", "Production of ships and marine equipment", "Civil Aviation", "Microelectronics", "Data Economics", "Science and Universities".

Their goal is to organize production based on their own development lines. This implies the availability of human resources competencies, means of production and intellectual property rights. Separate national projects for a number of goods are necessary, because now the Russian industry does not have time to wait for the market to adjust itself and offer the necessary technologies, the source said.   The total amount of state financing has not been disclosed, but, according to another interlocutor of Vedomosti, about 3 trillion rubles have been approved in the budget for the upcoming six-year period for these purposes, further increase in financing is now being discussed.

One of the necessary conditions for the approval and development of projects is the development and provision of a real mechanism for guaranteed demand from both the state and the private sector. A representative of the Ministry of Finance said that the number and composition of technological sovereignty projects are still being approved. The representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade assured that the same approaches will be applied to the management of technological sovereignty projects as they currently apply to national projects. The supervising departments will be determined when forming their passports.

In 2023, experts from the RANEPA (Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration) calculated the level of import dependence (the ratio of imports and the volume of the domestic market) in the main areas of technological sovereignty: it turned out that those industries that were included in new national projects are the most dependent, said Stepan Zemtsov, director of the Center for Economic Geography and Regionalism of the RANEPA. For example, the machine tool industry is import–dependent by 95.3%, microelectronics – by 92%, pharmaceuticals – by 87.9%, chemical industry – by 53%, shipbuilding – by 64.4%, medical industry - by 60.1%, aircraft industry – by 52.8%.

Perhaps it would also be useful to launch a separate project for the automotive industry, which is import-dependent by 67.3%, and in recent years this figure has been growing due to the influx of Chinese cars, Zemtsov continued. The Atom and New Energy Sources project also seems to him to be insufficiently broad – it will focus on the development of nuclear energy, but Russia has a high potential for other alternative energy sources (wind, solar and geothermal). Until 2022, it was the fastest growing sector of the economy, the expert recalled. In addition, it focuses on critical technologies of the future, including energy storage systems used in electric transport.

The implementation of techno projects will be successful if, in addition to supporting national manufacturers, it is focused on the production of export products, i.e. goods that are competitive on the world market, said the head of corporate business analytics at the bank   Dom.РФ Grigory Zhirnov. It is also important to focus on partnership with private businesses and support for competition, with full accountability and regular independent audit of results. The principles chosen by the government mostly meet these criteria, he concluded.

3 trillion rubles, pledged for six years, seem gigantic: now about 4 trillion rubles a year are spent on the entire section of the national economy in the federal budget, Vladimir Klimanov, director of the Institute for Public Finance Reform, recalled. In his opinion, this is a signal that industry support will clearly be measured in larger amounts than it is now. Zemtsov, on the contrary, believes that this amount will be enough if the business manages to attract another 5-6 trillion rubles. When financing scientific and technological projects, efficiency increases if a business invests at least 65-70% of its own funds, he explained.

The format of national projects obviously had to change: in 2018-2020, when current initiatives were modeled, the external environment was completely different and now it is necessary to adapt to new conditions, Klimanov believes. The appropriate approach has already been developed – the government intends to follow the path of a narrower, segmented solution to problems. This can be judged by the design of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles project, which was launched this year. "National projects have begun to reflect the concentration of forces and funds on the shock direction of movement, unlike state programs that cover the entire range of activities of authorities in some industry," the expert believes. The Ministry of Industry and Trade's cooperation with business in such projects can be organized on the basis of offset contracts, he suggested. In this form of interaction, both sides assume long-term obligations: the supplier understands that he must not release the product once, but establish the appropriate technology, and the buyer promises purchases for a certain future.

Source: https://www.vedomosti.ru/economics/articles/2024/03/19/1026479-v-pravitelstve-predlozhili-12-natsproektov-tehnologicheskogo-suvereniteta?utm_campaign=newspaper_19_3_2024&utm_medium=email&utm_source=vedomosti