Experts said whether there is enough capacity and money for this
The government has expanded the social gasification program to horticultural non-profit partnerships (SNT). A decree on this was signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. The networks will be installed free of charge to the boundaries of areas located near gasified settlements. Which houses will the innovation apply to? Will there be enough financial resources and capacity to implement the idea? Experts told MK about this.
Summer residents will have gas piped directly to their site. President Putin instructed the government to expand the program and lay gas networks to the borders of gardening partnerships following his address to the Federal Assembly in February 2024.
The decision on additional gasification must be made at a general meeting of the partnership members. At the same time, title documents must be drawn up for the house and land plot. An application for connection can be submitted either by the owner of the household or by the chairman of the SNT.
Let us recall that the social gasification program was launched by the government in 2021 on behalf of the president. At the end of 2023, the gasification level was 73.8%, it is planned to increase it to 83%. Now there are regions where more than 90% of residential areas are gasified (Moscow region, for example), and there are regions with a gasification level of up to 50% — in particular, Karelia.
Why was it necessary to extend the program to summer cottages? According to the Popular Front expert. Analytics” by Pavel Slyanchuk, today the development of individual housing construction is at a stage when people begin to live in their homes year-round. This gives rise to a situation related to the possibility of registration in garden houses, which in fact are no longer such houses.
“In such conditions, a year-round and reliable supply of utility resources is required, that is, electricity and gas, which is used for heating the house and cooking. For this reason, it was indeed necessary to extend the social gasification program to SNT. Today, not all settlements are included in it, but only those in which it is technologically possible to install a gas pipeline and there is a special website on which those settlements are indicated. There is such a legal gap that if there are gardening partnerships on the territory of a municipal district, then gas is supplied only to the territory of the urban district, but not to these gardening partnerships. This is exactly the problem the government is now trying to solve,” he says.
The expert believes that extending the program to SNT is unlikely to require additional funds. “Everything will happen within the already allocated limits. There should be enough capacity, after all, in Russia, gas workers, having once connected people who pay for it themselves, get a stable subscriber base, continues Sklyanchuk. — The main problems with connecting houses are pricing and waiting times, when a settlement has already been connected to gas, but has not yet been connected to specific houses. Here gas companies, of course, can draw up an investment program and invest their funds, but then reimburse these expenses through a subscription fee.»
Gardening partnerships have traditionally been excluded from the gasification program, since this required the consent of all participants, and the funds this required serious money — on average, about 500 thousand rubles per connection, says managing partner of B&C Agency Ivan Samoilenko.
“It often turned out that there was gas everywhere around, but not in SNT. Now the social gasification program will be extended to garden plots with houses. This will solve the problem of residents who live in their dachas permanently,” he emphasizes. “The program, although it requires investment of public funds, is ultimately beneficial not only to the population. Resource supplying organizations receive more funds in the form of consumption tariffs, and the state receives more funds in the form of taxes from these companies. So, there will certainly be additional funds for the implementation of the program; Gazprom is also interested in this, for which the main market for the sale of raw materials is now the Russian Federation.”