State contracts went beyond – Newspaper Kommersant No. 16 (7461) of 01/28/2023

The price of every tenth state construction contract worth over 100 million rubles. in 2022 was revised due to the rise in the cost of building materials, calculated in the NOSTROY association. On average, the estimated cost of such state-owned construction projects increased by 20% last year, and the total rise in price amounted to 180 billion rubles. Experts note that the high demand for the mechanism has become another confirmation of the imperfection of the pricing system in the “budget” construction. Its reform, which is a change in the settlement model, has been going on for many years and, according to the authorities, will be completed by the end of the third quarter of this year.

In 2022, the head of the National Association of Builders (NOSTROY) Anton Glushkov said, every tenth state construction contract worth more than 100 million rubles passed the procedure for reviewing prices due to an increase in the cost of materials. The value of the revised contracts amounted to 900 billion rubles – with a total volume of this “market” of 9 thousand contracts for 7.2 trillion rubles. As a result, the approved increase in prices amounted to 180 billion rubles – on average, contract prices increased by 20%.

Recall that the mechanism for revising the previously fixed prices of government contracts with builders was introduced in August 2021 – contractors and government customers got the opportunity to conclude additional agreements that allow increasing the cost of construction by 30%. For large projects – from 100 million rubles – a second state examination to confirm the estimate became a condition for this. At first, the mechanism concerned contracts concluded before July 1, 2021, and as a result, until January 1, 2023.

The office of Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin explained to Kommersant that the tool “proved its effectiveness, allowing construction to continue without failures” – in 2022, budget financing in the amount of 156.5 billion rubles was allocated for it. It should be noted that market participants complained about the long terms for receiving this money – the regions first waited for the transfer of funds from the federal center, then added their “share” and only after that concluded additional agreements with contractors.

The price revision mechanism does not apply to government contracts that will be concluded this year – the Ministry of Construction and the Deputy Prime Minister’s office did not comment on the possibility of extending its validity. Now, Marat Khusnullin’s office noted, the cost of building materials remains “quite stable”, but the government is ready to respond promptly to the industry’s requests for support.

As Ilya Ponomarev, a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Construction, notes, the price revision mechanism “saved a large number of contractors working at budget facilities,” but “help did not come to everyone – this was especially true for small enterprises, many of which left the market.” This, according to him, revealed systemic problems in pricing at state-owned construction projects – in particular, low prices for construction contracts that are not linked to market conditions (the segment of commercial contracts survived this situation much easier).

It should be noted that the reform of the pricing system in state construction, the essence of which is to change the approach to determining the estimated cost of construction projects to bring them closer to market realities, has been going on since 2015 and is still not completed. Initially, it was planned to switch from the basic-index method (the prices of 2001 are annually multiplied by indices) to the resource method, when prices are calculated on the basis of monitoring the materials market. As a result, it was decided to settle on a mixed resource-index method – estimates are calculated based on the data of the state information system on prices of the Federal State Information System of the Central System, and in the absence of data in it – from prices in 2021 with more detailed indices for groups of homogeneous resources. All regions should switch to this methodology by the end of the third quarter of 2023 – according to NOSTROY, six regions are ready for the transition in the first quarter, and 27 more in the second.

Evgenia Kryuchkova