Meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Khusnullin, you wanted to tell me about several new projects. Please, proceed.

Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin Khusnullin MaratDeputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation: Mr President, we have finished shaping the Infrastructure for Life project, which includes the Housing and Comfortable Urban Environment and Safe and High-Quality Roads. This year, we will complete these two national projects, which have proved effective over the past six years.

We have reached the planned targets in terms of housing as well as road construction. The project will end within several months, but we can already say that it has been fulfilled.

During the implementation of this project, our construction industry has grown by 35 percent. Growth was reported every year, regardless of the pandemic or anything else. This is thanks to the systemic decision and additional funding. We have done a great deal in terms of legislation, which explains the project's success.

The new project, Infrastructure for Life, incorporated all the best elements of the previous projects plus new approaches. The latter include a comprehensive approach to the development of residential areas, about which you spoke on many occasions. We have identified growth points, starting from rural reference points up to large agglomerations.

We have analysed the programme for the further development of housing and concluded that we will continue to build at least 100 million square metres of housing every year until 2030. In other words, new housing will constitute one fifth of the total by 2030, with 33 metres of housing per capita.

Our mortgage programme did well in the past years. For example, the number of new projects has grown by 15 percent year on year despite everything.

We are actively working on the urban development potential together with governors, that is, construction documents. We estimate our construction potential at around 500 million square metres. We hope to increase it to one billion square metres.

As you instructed, we are working on a modernisation programme for communal infrastructure. The programme is shaped by now, with different sources of funding, such as direct budgetary funding, loans, corporate funding, and investment. We believe we will be able to stop the depreciation of the infrastructure and to improve it substantially within the next five to six years. Moreover, it will not be a deterring factor for the development of residential areas because for some towns, we already have energy and communal infrastructure restrictions. We believe that it will help us achieve the goal as consistently as we did with roads.

We continue working on developing road infrastructure. We have a plan. You can look on the map, Mr President. It shows all the main…

Vladimir Putin: Support networks.

Marat Khusnullin: Yes. The map shows all of our international corridors which, by the way, serve 140 million of the Russian population. So, the key purpose of the main roads we have - the roads we call international - is to connect the cities, towns and regions in Russia. We have a schedule of works until 2030; they include 50 detour roads bypassing cities, something that is now highly in demand, as well as border access roads, and bringing roads up to regulatory standards. So, there is a general plan, and we have balanced out the money. The work is in progress.

An important matter you always pay attention to is road traffic safety. The number of car accidents goes down every year, along with the number of associated deaths and injuries. This is the result of our systemwide work with the Interior Ministry.

We have work on repayable financing set up well. It is a project that we started with the Finance Ministry and regional officials as per your instruction. We have investment budgetary loans, bonds and special treasury loans. All these tools make something we call an Infrastructure Menu.

We have reported to you multiple times. Thank you for extending this programme through 2030. Now every governor understands what they will be able to do in the next few years. And these funds are repayable. As a helpful measure, you have granted them the right to restructure, meaning they can use the funding, pay it back and then they can invest again, which is a great advantage.

Considering all the tasks you set, we believe that we are ready to affirm the project and achieve the set goals.

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Let's discuss it in more detail.

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