The Ministry of Construction presented the procedure for creating a new register of budgetary capital investments

The Ministry of Construction presented the procedure for creating a new register of budgetary capital investments – this year it should replace the Federal Targeted Investment Program. The register will be maintained on the basis of the “Electronic Budget” and will be associated with monitoring the progress of investment projects. It will include, as a matter of priority, construction projects that have begun and “unfinished” projects that are planned to be completed, as well as facilities being built within the framework of concessions. At the same time, it is planned to block financing of objects that do not have project documentation (unless it is the subject of a government order), and also have not submitted an assessment of their effectiveness.

The Ministry of Construction has prepared a draft government resolution on the procedure for maintaining a register of budget construction projects – it should replace the Federal Targeted Investment Program (FAIP). Let us recall that from this year the government abandoned its formation as an independent document (see “Kommersant” dated December 9, 2023). The transition to a registry model for planning budget investments based on the “Electronic Budget” is expected to speed up decision-making on financing, ensure digitalization of the process and increase its transparency. As noted in the Ministry of Construction, this is “one of the final stages of increasing the efficiency of capital investment management.”

The FAIP reform began in 2020 due to its many years of criticism for “unfinished projects” and slow disbursement of funds. In the process, the “transfer” of funds between objects without editing the budget was allowed and a “Single Customer in the Construction Industry” was created to complete problem projects. In 2022, the FAIP was transferred from the Ministry of Economy to the Ministry of Construction and became a five-year program within the framework of the comprehensive Construction program.

As the Ministry of Construction explained to Kommersant, “before the rules for maintaining the register are issued, a transition period has been established, which will be completed on June 1, 2024.” The register, like the FAIP, will contain information about the object, its cost, commissioning dates and will be linked to the monitoring of budget construction projects, which involves tracking the progress of projects in real time to assess the risks of its delay (see “Kommersant” dated December 5, 2023 ). The presence of an object in the register will be the basis for the start of financing – there will be no need to adopt acts of the main managers of budget funds, while objects under construction will be in the register until their completion. The Ministry of Construction expects to simplify the procedure for including objects in the register by merging duplicate norms.

To solve past problems of the FAIP, the Ministry of Construction proposes to establish a priority for inclusion in the register of projects on which work has already begun, unfinished objects that have been decided to be completed, as well as other construction projects subject to instructions from the president, prime minister or a decision of the presidium of the government commission for regional development. It should be noted that the priority of solving the problem of “unfinished projects” corresponds to the policy of recent years to combat long-term construction projects – earlier the authorities also brought them into a register for making decisions about their fate.

It is also proposed to include in the register activities for the construction of facilities within the framework of concessions. As the Ministry of Construction explains, previously concessions were not included in the FAIP – this issue is being further discussed with interested government agencies. Note that this approach generally corresponds to the logic of accounting for budgetary obligations within the framework of concessions, which were criticized for the opacity of risks for the budgetary system.

The proposed procedure also resolves the issue of financing facilities that are not ready for construction more strictly – we note that the Accounts Chamber previously criticized the FAIP for including facilities without design documentation (see “Kommersant” dated December 12, 2020). It is proposed to place a “restriction” (blocking budget limits by the Federal Treasury) on the execution and financing of work, unless the development of documentation is the subject of a government contract at the same time as construction (in which case the restriction is introduced before the conclusion of a government contract). The same applies to cases where there is no conclusion from the Ministry of Economy on the efficiency of using public funds – the assessment is carried out in relation to new state-owned buildings worth more than 3 billion rubles, as well as in the case of a change in the capacity of an object for which a decision on financing has already been made by more than 10% – during its course, the demand for the created capacity, the possibility of satisfying it in other ways, or the possibility of financing without federal budget funds are assessed (see “Kommersant” dated December 20, 2023).

Evgenia Kryuchkova