Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 25 held an extended meeting of the Presidium of the State Council of the Russian Federation on the issue “On the development of exports,” the Kremlin press service reported.
“In recent years, the costs of our exporters for transshipment of products have increased, ship freight, insurance and so on have become more expensive. Obviously, this has a direct impact on the price, and thus on the competitiveness of domestic products abroad,” the president said.
He called for fighting logistical barriers to Russian exports, ensuring transport connectivity from the first to the last kilometer, and above all with the promising markets of the Global South, Africa, Latin America. “As a matter of fact, in fact, traditionally our markets for the sale of our products have been there, they were there in the first place,” Putin added.
For this purpose, new routes and international transportation corridors are being developed, such as “North-South”, corridors in the Azov-Black Sea and Eastern directions, as well as the Northern Sea Route.
“I would like to emphasize once again that the commissioning of transport infrastructure facilities should be synchronized with the development of logistics services - warehouses, cargo processing terminals and so on, and the construction timeframe should correspond to the plans to increase supplies to friendly countries, to enter new, growing markets,” he summed up.
The head of state reminded that in 2025 the renewed national project “International Cooperation and Export” will be launched. The basis for its decisions, measures and mechanisms should be the results achieved in the export sphere, the priorities of economic development that Russia faces and objective global trends.
For the long-term development of foreign economic relations, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of financial and information support for exports, actively create logistics and transportation infrastructure, as well as platforms for industrial cooperation.
At the same time, it is fundamentally important to encourage Russian companies to enter markets for goods with high added value, to increase non-resource non-energy exports, including supplies of machine-building goods, food products and so on.
“I note that from 2001 to 2023, the volume of Russia's non-resource non-energy exports has more than quadrupled. This is a good result, four times, not some percentages, but four times - from 36 to 148 billion dollars. This, of course, is far from the limit for us, it's not really that much,” Putin cited the data. - But in the first seven months of this year, non-resource non-energy exports continued to grow and increased by another five percent - up to 89.8 billion [dollars]”.
At the same time, as the president emphasized, “last year the share of settlements for Russian exports in the so-called toxic Western currencies halved.” “The share of settlements in rubles in foreign trade transactions is approaching forty percent. From 2021 to 2023, the share of rubles in settlements for exports almost tripled to 39 percent. The share of settlements in rubles for imports grew by another two percent, up to 30 percent in total,” the president continued, adding that, it is planned to carry out settlements through clearing payment systems and platforms.
“All over the world, issues of creating a so-called supranational payment infrastructure are now being worked out - I want to emphasize this, very many countries and regions of the world are working closely on this - with the possibility of using digital currencies of central banks and digital financial assets. Such a system would operate smoothly and independently of third countries. I want to emphasize that: we are not the only ones who are doing this because of the well-known events. It is worldwide, it is a common trend in all regions - both in the Middle East and Asia, everyone is thinking about it, everyone is thinking and coming up with different options,” Putin said.
The head of state also urged to promote Russian products in foreign markets, in connection with which he instructed the government together with the Russian Export Center to prepare a plan to scale up Russian brands, as well as to synchronize the support of small and medium-sized businesses by the regional authorities and the federal strategy.
“The main goal is, strangely enough, not just to increase tons, cubic meters of supplies or even the amount of export revenue. The main goal is that exports, the competition of Russian companies in the world markets serve as a catalyst for the renewal of our industry, agriculture, services, and many other sectors, stimulate the growth of efficiency of domestic enterprises, and allow the creation of modern, well-paid jobs - right here in Russia. This is the ultimate goal,” Mr. Putin summarized.
