The Ministry of Construction proposes to postpone the transition to a new model of estimates in construction a little more

The transition of all regions to a new pricing model in budget construction may be postponed again: the Ministry of Construction proposes to postpone the completion of this work from the third quarter of this year to the first quarter of 2024. Only a little more than half of the regions are ready to switch to market prices at the appointed time, and the information system, into which prices for construction resources should be loaded, is still only 10% full. This is explained both by the complexity of the process of generating data on the cost of building resources, and the formal approach of the regions to pricing issues, experts say.

The Ministry of Construction proposes once again to postpone the deadline for the final transition by all regions to the resource-index method for determining the estimated cost of state construction – from the third quarter of this year to the first quarter of 2024, follows from the draft government decree prepared by the department. The Ministry of Construction explains its initiative with the desire to “eliminate possible negative consequences for the construction complex” and prevent delays in the implementation of projects. As previously noted in the department, regions that do not have time to enter the resource-index method will face the impossibility of passing state expertise for new objects.

The essence of the reform, we recall, is to change the approach to determining the estimated cost in order to approximate market realities. It has been dragging on since 2015, starting after scandals with a multiple increase in the cost of some large state-owned construction projects. Initially, it was planned to switch from the basic-index method (“basic” prices of 2001 are annually multiplied by indices) to the resource method based on monitoring market prices. However, the launch of the reform has been repeatedly postponed, in particular, due to the extremely slow filling of data on prices for construction resources in the information system for pricing in construction (FSIS CS), which is a key element of the reform. As a result, it was decided to make the transition to a new pricing model gradual, starting with a mixed resource-index method (calculation of estimates based on the data of the FSIS CA, and in their absence, from 2001 prices with more detailed indices for groups of homogeneous resources).

As the Ministry of Construction explained to Kommersant, now the possibility of switching to the use of the resource-index method is fully ensured throughout the country: 20 regions have switched to it, another 29 regions are formalizing the transition (all necessary procedures have been completed), and the rest are “completing calculations and verifying information, necessary for the transition.

According to the president of NOSTROY Anton Glushkov, “the postponement should be considered in conjunction with an assessment of the activities of the heads of regions, so that this issue is finally resolved.” Statistics on the transition of regions to the new method, he believes, “shows that many subjects of the Russian Federation formally relate to pricing issues – for the transition, efforts really need to be made to collect data, especially in those regions that formally reacted at one time to the instruction to create regional centers monitoring”. Now, says Anton Glushkov, there is not a single region left with zero filling rates for the FSIS CA, but its average occupancy in the second quarter barely exceeded 10%.

According to Maxim Gorinsky, vice-president of the Union of Estimators for Regional Development, the next postponement was generally expected and predictable: the problem with the creation of regional monitoring centers has not been solved for a long time, the fulfillment of the order was reported many years ago, but they were really created only in a third of the regions, which does not allow filling the FSIS CA. Also, he believes, the lack of incentives and desire even for the leading regions to switch to a new pricing system, as well as the unresolved issue of responsibility for failure to fulfill plans, led to the transfer. Earlier, the introduction of fines for non-submission of data to the FSIS CA, the conclusion of state contracts only with those who submit data, was discussed, but this was not done. “Half measures have led to the fact that we have what we have: zugzwang,” says Maxim Gorinsky.

Evgenia Kryuchkova