Tatarstan President: The main task is to prevent slowing down of the construction pace

On 16 March Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov took part in a videoconference on issues of social and economic support of Russian entities held by the President of the country Vladimir Putin. 

Speaking at the meeting, Minnikhanov, who is the chairman of the State Council Commission in Construction, Housing and Utilities Sector and Urban Environment, gave a number of proposals on mitigation of restrictive measures in the construction and housing and utilities sector:

In particular he said: “Our Commission, which represents interests of regions, organizes joint work with Russian Ministry of Construction and operational resolution of arising questions under the work of the headquarters headed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin. 

The work on smoothing consequences of the restrictive measures resulted in passing the corresponding federal laws which make it possible for us to take off the table such issues as possibility of changing the design documents without having repetitive expert evaluations which decreases the number of excessive approvals and documents. The changes of the state contract acts envisage the ability of a Russian entity to make purchases from a single supplier. I would like to ask to make the same decision concerning the municipal procurement.

It is also necessary to solve the issues of giving loans to commercial real estate construction as this will help to create jobs and provide development of territories”.

Minnikhanov expressed his gratitude to President Putin for preservation of limits in national projects and large infrastructural facilities as this will provide demand on machine-building products, give load to construction industry and most important will provide preservation of jobs.

Speaking about construction materials, he said: “We monitor prices on construction materials daily and currently they are growing. We ask to envisage the possibility of 80% advance payments for the already signed contracts as I think this will be a rather substantial support. For efficient use of the advance payment we propose to review the requirement of compulsory bank guarantees in state contracts. We would also like to ask the Government of the country to provide centralized procurement of construction materials for state contracts as it is done with mineral fertilizers procurement. The main task is to prevent slowing down of the construction pace”.

Minnikhanov also proposed to increase technological modernization financial support to special vehicles manufacturers as this will make it possible for domestic companies to compete with world brands and develop technological independence. He added that the construction, road maintenance companies and utility providers should get subsidies for initial payments for domestic special vehicles leasing or even get such vehicles without the initial payment.

“In 2021 the reduced mortgage share made 67 per cent of the whole mortgages. Due to this we ask to maintain the reduced mortgage program and even to expand its certain positions”, Tatarstan President said.

“The decision of the Russian Government to change the conditions of penalties accrual for late utility bills payment has become an important measure for supporting unprotected layers of population. With the aim of keeping tariffs we propose to consider possibility of subsidizing interest rates of the loans taken by resource providers for their investment programs”, he concluded.