Council and prime minister – Newspaper Kommersant No. 232 (7433) dated 12/14/2022

Yesterday, at a meeting between Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and members of the expert council under the government, the results of the first year of using the new format for expanded interaction between experts and officials were summed up. The work they have done has even been quantified: out of 1,500 expert initiatives, 350 have been supported and are already being implemented. Now the White House is looking to the council to participate in anticipating new risks and preparing responses to them. The experts themselves, judging by the words of the council’s coordinator Yaroslav Kuzminov, see their task as developing measures to “preserve normalcy”, the stability of the economy and overcome technological gaps.

The meeting between Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and members of the expert council under the government actually became a reporting event on the work of this structure over the past year. The Council, as an advisory body, has existed since 2012, its task is to provide expert support in the preparation of decisions by the authorities.

A year ago, the work of the council was reformatted in order to deepen interaction, the previous format was recognized as formal due to the fact that experts were mainly involved in the discussion of decisions already made (see Kommersant dated December 23, 2021). To establish feedback in the government apparatus, an examination and planning department was created, the council received the right to initiate research and access to the state automated system “Management”.

As Yaroslav Kuzminov, Coordinator of the Council and HSE Academic Supervisor, explained yesterday, the experts were tasked with supporting government activities, primarily in the implementation of national projects. Within the framework of this work, about 1.5 thousand initiatives were presented during the year (half of them concerned “counter-sanctions” measures), of which 350 were supported and are being implemented. Some of the proposals, according to the coordinator of the council, were focused on “balancing the growing role of the state through deregulation and removal of barriers in certain segments of labor relations, as well as excessive mandatory requirements that block mechanisms for adapting to changing conditions.”

Now, as it followed from the words of Mikhail Mishustin, the interaction of experts and officials has been further expanded by including Anastasia Permyakova, Deputy Head of the Analytical Center under the Government (engaged in expert support of the White House reforms), on the board. Also, apparently, in accordance with the new accents in the work of the government, the council was replenished with industry representatives, in particular, it included Aeroflot CEO Sergei Aleksandrovsky, adviser to the MGIMO administration and ex-head of Rostourism Zarina Doguzova, head of Kaspersky Lab Evgeny Kaspersky.

Now, according to Mikhail Mishustin, the expert council is expected to “the most active participation” in predicting new risks against the backdrop of a “tense international situation” and, accordingly, in the preventive development of measures to respond to them. Among the requests from the White House is the development of measures that should prevent “the loss of intellectual and cultural capital and support those who want to develop their projects.” Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research Grigory Trubnikov said in response to this that in order to retain scientific personnel in the country, reductions in spending on science should not be allowed, and, as it followed from his words, its funding must be increased, since the income of Russian scientists is often three to six times lower than foreign ones.

In general, under the sanctions, the expert council, according to Yaroslav Kuzminov, sees its task as developing measures to “preserve normality”, support a stable state of the economy and overcome technological gaps. As the head of the RSPP, Alexander Shokhin, added, “mobilization adaptation of the economy is a search for balances between security interests and the normal functioning and development of the economy.” And the basis of such a balance, he believes, can be “technological sovereignty based on import substitution”, in particular, own developments, reverse engineering, production of analogues, as well as large-scale nationwide technological projects. To implement all this, Alexander Shokhin noted, it is necessary to develop approaches to assessing the costs and volumes of support. Business, he said, “is waiting for the launch of a number of new solutions,” in particular soft loans for organizations implementing projects for the production of priority products, as well as the preparation of support measures along the entire chain – from engineering schools and project documentation developers to manufacturers and exporters.

Evgenia Kryuchkova