Putin speaks out for effective investment in innovation.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did not disappoint participants at a March 3rd meeting of the Government Commission on High Technologies and Innovations. Employing his typical flair for metaphors and gestures, he even counted his fingers while enumerating federal allocation volumes and their disbursement.
"In 2010, we allocated nearly 1.1 trillion roubles, or over 10% of the federal budget. Where did the funding go? It was spent on fundamental and applied research, on higher education, on high-tech healthcare, and on specialised federal programmes," Putin said.
Some officials, including Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, began to count along with him.
"What are these programmes? Aviation, space exploration, and the Rosatom Nuclear Energy State Corporation. As we can see, the funding is quite substantial," the prime minister concluded.
The prime minister also had a few choice metaphors for the cost-effective disbursement of such allocations.
"We cannot settle for mere placards that return nothing but a showy name and, perhaps, an estimable past, and then pay for research that is non-topical, redundant, and sometimes merely taken from dusty cupboards of the previous century," Putin said.
"New knowledge and technology cannot be shelved to lie idle," the prime minister said, noting the need for a full-fledged national intellectual property market.
"Frankly speaking, we still have very few sectors for innovation," Putin said, referring to economic modernisation.
As a result of the meeting, the following decisions were made according to our sources:
1. The powers of the Government Commission on High Technologies and Innovations will be expanded. The Commission's decisions "will become mandatory for all executive bodies, whose top officials will assume personal responsibility for their fulfillment," according to the words of the prime minister.
2. The department of science, high technologies, and education will be established at the government's Executive Office.
3. There are plans to set up a joint R&D database.
4. The prime minister suggested that those present "allot a target innovation project quota to the Vnesheconombank state corporation."
5. Putin instructed the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development to reassess the situation regarding support for innovative projects and to monitor the effectiveness of benefits allotted to enterprises.
6. Finally, the prime minister said: "State procurement programmes should stipulate a mandatory innovation component. Potential suppliers and the business community should see that the state plans to prioritise modern-product purchases, and that access to budgetary orders is primarily open to those implementing innovation projects."
Alexander Gamov