Russian industrialists called for the return of the State Planning Commission: will it help business

Economist Maslennikov believes we should not go back to the old structures

The new, as you know, is the well-forgotten old. That’s the flower of our economy, industry representatives are asking the government to return the State Planning Commission. And with it – five-year state planning. Probably, they missed the flashy slogans like “Five-year plan in three years!” or “Let’s hand over the object by the Great October!”

The survey, conducted by the State University of Management, involved 278 managers of large and medium-sized industrial enterprises. 37% of them believe that it is necessary to return state planning to all spheres of the modern economy. Another 41.5% say that it is better to do this only in a few industries. Well, only 13.3% are sure that it is inappropriate to do this.

The return to economic roots is understandable. The business will get loans, for example, it will be engaged in electronics, in which we have a big backlog. And we just need to “catch up and overtake.” But in a year it will turn out that we have established good-neighborly relations with the former unfriendly country and all sorts of imported microchips and gadgets for Russia will be several times cheaper than by trial and error to raise production from scratch.

Judging by the results of a survey of industrialists, they need firm confidence not just in the future, but for the whole five-year period ahead. Such confidence, no matter what they say, in the era of developed socialism, the Soviet people and plant directors had.

Although it can be assumed that most modern managers are people of a fairly young age. And it is unlikely that they caught the time when, according to the predestination of the party, the rivers turned back or successfully competed with the Americans in space exploration. Of course, there were advantages to long-term planning.

But there were moments (and quite a few) when the construction trust could get a brick machine to complete the construction of a residential building only in the next five-year plan, and this is in two years. Because three cubic meters of extra bricks for the current five-year plan are not planned, they are not filled in the State Planning Commission. Partly due to bureaucratic rigmarole, the Soviet Union collapsed.

So today – back to the USSR?! After 30-odd years of some kind, but a market economy.

– Not everything is so straightforward, – economist, leading expert of the Center for Political Technologies Nikita Maslennikov comments on this survey. – The participants showed a more flexible position, therefore, the mention of the State Planning Commission and the five-year plans is rather a metaphor. Yes, domestic business today is in a state of serious uncertainty. To make a decision on development, he needs a guaranteed demand for products, at least from the state. We need a long-term perspective to optimize production, employment, and investment activities.

The expert believes that the request is not for the State Planning Commission, as such, but for the strategic vision of the state – what it needs and how it is going to support the manufacturer. In a word, no one is going to evict the State Duma from the building that historically belonged to the Soviet State Planning Committee.

– In Russia, various state programs have been created, controlled by the president and the government. These are also elements of planning. But, as a rule, they are not fully implemented. Why?

– They are weakly linked to the development of production, the modernization of the economy. These projects exist on their own, and they need to be translated into the system. We need market mechanisms. If we have stable taxes and insurance premiums, there will be a completely different attitude towards investments. We need market mechanisms and competition. This environment is primarily necessary for the state so that it can choose products according to quality.

– But is it realistic to solve such problems in the current conditions?

– Really, and this is already being done in some industries. The state tells industrialists what it needs in the area of ​​critical imports. Companies receive preferential loans and invest their own investments. And they give an economic effect. All this works in a market economy and without any State Planning Commission. We should not jump from one extreme to the other.