MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2020) The Russian government will optimize development institutions to achieve national development goals in line with a decree by President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at a meeting with deputy prime ministers on Monday.
"At the request of the president, the government will optimize development institutions so that they can fully work to achieve national development goals, which are determined by the presidential decree," Mishustin said, noting that the cabinet of ministers analyzed the activities of the main development institutions.
Mishustin added that in recent years, new challenges have emerged that require significant adjustments to the work of development institutions. The analysis showed that the activities of these institutions were weakly linked to the new national development goals, and there was a significant overlap of functions with Federal executive bodies and commercial organizations, and there was no single management mechanism.
The prime minister said that a large investment block would be formed on the basis of VEB.RF, Russia's national economic development institution, with the transfer of the innovation development institution Rusnano, the Skolkovo Foundation and others under its management.
According to Mishustin, part of the functions of eight more development institutions will be redistributed between VEB.RF and federal executive authorities, and these development institutions themselves will be eliminated.
Mishustin noted that strategically important organizations that are aimed at developing specific industries and supporting the country's defense capability would be retained in the new structure. These organizations include state atomic energy corporation Rosatom, state space corporation Roscosmos, state tech developer Rostec and others.
In December 2015, Putin stated the need to optimize the development institutions. The aim was to ensure the optimization of the composition and functions of development institutions. The government was ordered to establish a limited list of priorities for their activities.
Moreover, in July, taking into account the specificity of the COVID-19 pandemic period, the president issued the decree on the national development goals of Russia for the period until 2030. The goals include, among other things, bringing life expectancy in Russia to 78 years, making Russia rank among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of general education quality, lowering the poverty level, as well as ensuring that the real growth of investment into capital stock in 2030 is no less than 70 percent compared to the same figure of 2020.
