The government was recommended to follow the experience of tsarist and Soviet times
The Moscow Economic Forum (MEF), which met for the seventh time this year, had the status of a semi-marginal platform in professional circles for a long time. Experts gathered here who did not agree with the liberal course of the government and advocated a return to the best of the Soviet experience. But the past year has changed the situation dramatically. In the context of external challenges faced by Russia, talk about the introduction of planning, unified management by industry and a well-thought-out personnel policy sounded even in the offices of the powerful.
Opening the plenary session, IEF Chairman Konstantin Babkin emphasized that for a long time Russia lived in the global economy paradigm, where it was assigned the role of an appendage of the West. But today the goals have changed — we are building a sovereign economy against the backdrop of global trends towards deglobalization and multipolarity. However, monetary and tax policies are still working according to the old concept, and the MEF is needed to convey to everyone the idea of the need to rebuild the Russian economy. Our country needs low taxes, reasonable protectionism, soft monetary policy for development, the speaker pointed out.
Russia announced import substitution in 2014, and in 2022 — about the coming acquisition of technological sovereignty, but so far the changes are almost imperceptible. With unlimited financial resources, as evidenced by the record trade surplus for 2022, things are not moving forward. State Duma deputy Oksana Dmitrieva drew attention to this during her speech. She compared three industrializations with each other: the last one in the Russian Empire (initiated by the reforms of the Minister of Finance S.V. Witte), the Soviet one (1928-1940) and the last one announced in our country. And if in previous eras it was possible to increase the growth of industrial production at times, then until 2013 there was deindustrialization in Russia. Only in 2014 did they manage to reach a new level. “They announced a course for a new industrialization, but the growth rate was only 12%, although there were already sanctions and the need to develop the military-industrial complex,” — noted Dmitrieva. The key difference between the latest Russian industrialization is the presence of a large amount of financial resources, this was not the case either in the Russian Empire or in the USSR, but these resources are flowing «in the wrong direction.» A huge outflow of funds goes into the «virtual» banking sector. “This shows a completely unthinkable financial resource that is not being used,” — the deputy emphasized.
The most important problem of the current industrialization is the difficulty of answering the question: who will carry it out? “We produce fewer engineers than economists and lawyers, — noted Dmitrieva. — What kind of industrialization can we talk about at all?" The factor that scares people away from engineering specialties is their general lack of prestige. The level of income that production can offer to a graduate of a good technical and financial university is very different. In the financial sector today, beginners earn higher salaries, and sometimes — factor of. According to Dmitrieva, it is necessary to increase the income of novice engineers. Direct budgetary supplements are needed along the entire chain of training technicians, direct budgetary supplements to all those employed in industry, as is already being done today at military-industrial complex enterprises. For the enterprises themselves, it is necessary to create long-term demand programs so that they can promise their employees the opportunity to earn in the enterprise for a long time. And management should be carried out not at individual plants or segments, but at the level of entire industries, emphasized Oksana Dmitrieva.
Andrey Klepach, chief economist at VEB, former deputy head of the Ministry of Economic Development, pointed out that it would be extremely difficult to win the economic war with a 3% share of engineering in GDP. Russia is already in a battle where our industrial potential is dozens of times smaller than that of our opponents. According to the expert, the stake should be placed on the increase in knowledge-intensive industries, moreover, «non-traditional» solutions are needed. “If we keep the rules by which we live, then it will not be possible to make a breakthrough, — Klepach noted. — I would not even talk about reindustrialization, but about the economy acquiring a new, knowledge-intensive look. At the same time, Russia has everything to increase the science-intensive sector to 26-27% by 2030-2035, however, if we decide to overcome the «staff shortage». The number of people employed in industry has been declining in recent years, as has the number of researchers. “If earlier we made two aircraft at an aircraft building plant, now according to our plans we need to make 12, then 20, which will require at least 3.5 thousand workers and engineers, but there is nowhere to get them,” — complained the speaker, adding that the experience of both the tsarist and Soviet times showed that this is also a solvable problem.
All participants in the meeting pointed to the need for economic development planning. However, is it the only thing? Let us not have Soviet-style plans, but the number of «road maps» on import substitution, industrial policy and the development of various sectors in Russia, sufficient. Only all the indicators remain on paper, which, as experts speaking at the forum point out, did not happen during the Soviet five-year plans or in China, which made an economic leap. It is not enough to write a good development plan, you also need to have the political will to demand its implementation and punish those who did not.
In past years, the authorities did not listen too much to the voice of the IEF. Now times have changed, and it is quite possible that the recipes for economic transformation from the forum participants will be adopted by the government.