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Belarusian prime minister in favor of repayable innovation fund subsidies
MINSK, 26 March (BelTA) – The bulk of the state financial support out of innovation funds should be discounted but repaid. Prime Minister of Belarus Sergei Rumas made the statement at a session of the Council of Ministers’ Presidium held on 26 March to discuss progress in implementing the national innovative development program, BelTA has learned.
Sergei Rumas said: “I believe that in order to raise financial discipline and responsibility for the timely implementation of projects the bulk of state financial support out of innovation funds should be discounted yet repaid. The relevant mechanism is already available – the Belarusian Innovative Fund.”
Problems with spending allocated funds were also mentioned. In 2018 nearly 94% of the amount of money allocated by the central innovative fund was spent. The percentage reported by municipal innovative funds was only 74%. Sergei Rumas was displeased with the poor financial discipline of individual recipients of funds. “The appropriated resources are not spent on time and the government has to act fast to redistribute them at the end of the year. I think companies, which undertake to implement projects using money from innovative funds and fail to do so, should complete their projects without using state budget funding,” Sergei Rumas remarked.
The head of government stated that many regions have yet to come up with procedures to find and select projects designed to form high-tech branches of the national economy. Meanwhile, considerable funds are often channeled into modernizing troubled enterprises in conventional industries. “It is understandable that those enterprises need to be modernized but without damaging the development of new sectors. The most effective projects should be prioritized,” the prime minister stressed.
As many as 94 projects were in progress in 2018 as part of the innovative development program. Of them ten production sites reached the designed output capacity. As many as 20 new production sites were created. A network of innovative infrastructure subjects made of 25 organizations is now operational. Nearly 3,000 jobs have been created or modernized. Nearly all indicators of the country’s innovation-driven development were improved yet a number of customers of the program systemically fail to hit their targets. The number includes the Architecture and Construction Ministry, the Agriculture and Food Ministry, the Transport and Communications Ministry, the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the Belarusian state light industry concern Bellegprom, and the Minsk Oblast administration.
Sergei Rumas concluded that there are systemic problems with executing the program. 2019 is the year when work on the new program for the next five-year term will begin and the new program should not inherit today’s problems.
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