Glazyev: Mechanisms for refunding funds from subsidies in the Union State are needed

"It seems to me that there is a certain narrowness of the tools that we have, since the programs are implemented in the form of subsidies. As a matter of fact, subsidies are the general accepted norm for government support of research and development in promising, but at the same time risky types of activities at the forefront of scientific and technological progress, and the governments of Belarus and Russia spend a lot of money on subsidizing research and development, just as the union budget spends them in the part where we are trying to combine existing reserves and scientific and technical potentials," the Secretary of State commented, answering a question from SOYUZ about the results of the meeting.

He noted that reversibility is not always possible here, because, on the one hand, scientific and technical problems that are solved through programs can have a cross-cutting effect and be important for different industries and fields of activity that the state raises to the required level of competence and quality. A classic example is the development of standards. This is a non-commercial process, but it is very important for economic development.

Sergey Glazyev explained that the programs of the Union State are a key functional in the activities of the organs of the Union State. "There are many different ones, scientific and technical programs were discussed here, of which more than 60 have been implemented during the existence of the Union State. They are focused on solving the problems of scientific and technological development, where we could, relying on the combination of our scientific and technical potentials, obtain new, preferably breakthrough results, on the basis of which we could create new high-tech industries that are competitive on a global scale, activate the existing new technical potential, and maybe even create new types of activities for the whole industry," he explained.

The Secretary of State noted that about three billion rubles are spent annually on the implementation of programs. This amounts to about half of the union budget. Therefore, some kind of return to the budget of the Union State is expected from the programs.

"On the other hand, the current legislation does not provide for age subsidies. That's why they use subsidies, property is created, it is assigned to users, and it is under the control of the ministries of customers, and a register of property is maintained in the Standing Committee of the Union State. But this property itself is used, as a rule, by developers, and it is impossible to isolate it in any way to extract any payments from this property complex, it is legally impossible to do this," the Secretary of State explained.

He stressed that the legislative framework does not allow this. "Therefore, if we say