Housing and communal services moderated injections – Newspaper Kommersant No. 205 (7406) of 03.11.2022

Budget financing of the housing and communal services modernization program in 2023-2025 may amount to 280 billion rubles – approximately the same amount of funds is planned to be attracted from extra-budgetary sources. The priority of the program will be the renewal of worn-out housing and communal services: about 40% of networks need to be replaced, which slows down the development of housing construction. However, in order to involve private investors, on whom the authorities place a considerable stake, it is necessary to reform the tariff policy in the industry.

The housing and communal services modernization program is planned to be approved by the end of the year, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said yesterday at a government hour in the Federation Council, if the volume of its budget financing is confirmed. Recall that the president instructed the government to prepare a program with funding of about 150 billion rubles. per year, however, as the official admitted, “not the money that was asked for” will be allocated. This is due to the budget deficit. So, according to Marat Khusnullin, about 30 billion rubles are provided for the implementation of the program. in 2023, 100 billion rubles for 2024 and 150 billion rubles for 2025. In addition, the authorities expect to attract the same amount of extra-budgetary investments.

With these funds, Marat Khusnullin specified, first of all, it is planned to finance the replacement of dilapidated utility networks – each region relies on at least 500 million rubles for these purposes. subject to extra-budgetary co-financing of at least 20% of the project cost. Now about 40% of networks (391 thousand out of 940 thousand km) need updating. It should be noted that according to the strategy for the development of the construction industry and housing and communal services until 2030, published yesterday, at least 5% per year must be replaced to prevent the degradation of networks. Now the pace of this process is 1–2% per year (with a dilapidation of 3% of networks per year). For the accelerated renewal of networks, 9 trillion rubles are required. until 2030, and to replace infrastructure with wear and tear of more than 60% – more than 4 trillion rubles. additional investments provided for in the tariffs for the implementation of investment programs.

The developed program is positioned as one of the main instruments for financing the development of housing and communal services. The need for this is directly related to plans to increase housing construction. Although special attention is paid to supporting demand for housing through preferential mortgage programs, they, as follows from the speech of the Deputy Prime Minister, can be extended if it is reduced in the future, and expanded, in particular, by working out support for mortgages on secondary housing for market balancing (see p. 8): problems in the housing and utilities sector limit the opportunities for the construction sector. Thus, a high level of depreciation of housing and communal services reduces the possibility of attaching new houses to them, there is not enough capacity to develop new sites, and regions and municipalities do not have enough funds to provide housing construction with communal infrastructure. These problems are especially acute in the sector of individual housing construction, which accounts for more than half of new housing.

In part, the authorities are already trying to “close” this deficit at the expense of infrastructure budget loans (1 trillion rubles of such loans have already been distributed; see Kommersant of August 4), as well as 150 billion rubles. preferential loans from the National Welfare Fund in 2022-2023 (according to the presentation of the Deputy Prime Minister presented yesterday, 152 agreements worth 77.9 billion rubles have already been concluded). However, taking into account the fact that the authorities are making a significant bet on the involvement of investors in housing and communal services – in particular, through the mechanism of concessions (as of April 1, the industry has 2.4 thousand agreements in the amount of about 713.6 billion rubles),— what is required, as Marat Khusnullin put it, is “building a normal system” of tariffs that will allow the restoration of networks, but without a “global increase in tariffs”.

It should be noted that now the risks of aggravating the situation in housing and communal services are even increasing due to the indexation of tariffs to a level below actual inflation (against this background, they will increase twice in 2022; see Kommersant of September 23), as well as the possibility of not implementing investment programs this year without penalties, in connection with which plans for modernization can be shifted, and investment resources are spent on current expenses. According to the strategy, a balanced model should be based on several principles: long-term tariffs, preservation of savings obtained as a result of modernization, long-term guarantees of return and return on investment.

Evgenia Kryuchkova