Russian Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev delivered a speech during the business breakfast “Export agenda for Agribusiness: New Investment Opportunities” at the Golden Autumn 2018. The audience encompassed regional heads, top management of major businesses, government officials, foreign guests, financiers and industrial experts.
The Ministry’s head believes that nowadays the key challenge on the agenda is the matter of increasing agri exports that demands a lot of work on establishment of new competitive entities within traditional sub-sectors and sectors generating high value-added output.
The state development program for the agri sector features a wide range of support tools, including concessional loan mechanism, reimbursement of interest on investment loans and part of the direct costs of construction and modernization of production facilities.
“About 16 thousand investment projects all over Russia receive reimbursement of the cost of interest on capital loans. The total amount of state support for them exceeds 1.2 trillion rubles”, stated Dmitry Patrushev.
The minister considers that one of the key levers for the export-oriented projects should be a comprehensive program of international competitiveness providing for engagement between the state and the business aimed at targeted supporting export-oriented enterprises. To date, more than 400 of such projects have been submitted to the Ministry, which should ensure $17.5 billion agri export surplus.
According to the passport of the national project, the international competitiveness program mechanism will be in effect from 2019 to 2021 inclusive. For the specified period, it is planned to conclude 100 relevant agreements at least.
During the discussion, the governmental activities were highlighted as a key for improving the investment climate. In turn, representatives of foreign delegations shared their successful capital raising experience applicable in agriculture.
As Dmitry Patrushev emphasized, the accomplishment of increasing agri exports urges more than just state-run efforts and appealed to the audience to get involved.