The RF government has adopted a strategy for housing and utilities infrastructure development in the Russian Federation to last until 2020.
Prime-Minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke about it at the “Urban development: housing and utilities” forum in Moscow on January 27th. The Minister of Construction, Housing and Utilities, Mikhail Menn, also took part in the event.
The Ministry press office remarked that the document discussed determines the direction of the utilities sphere’s development until 2020. According to them, expected investments in the sphere will surpass 500 bln rubles a year. The annual turnover in the sphere is over 4.1 trn rubles – i.e. about 6% of Russia’s GDP.
One of the key areas of the strategy implementation is organizing active and responsible room ownership in apartment blocks.
The strategy is aimed at business development, competitive environment enhancement and private investment attraction in the utilities sphere, improvement of the relations between owners, management companies and resource suppliers, and an efficiency increase in the energy industry.
The government intends to keep utilities payments at the level of inflation until 2018. This year the average increase in payments will not surpass 4%. The Prime Minister also suggested postponing the decision on common facilities upkeep until January 1st, 2017.
The strategy will become the working plan for the utilities sphere reform for the Ministry. The suggestion of the Ministry on the protection from inflation of citizens’ payments for major repairs at the expense of the banks’ percentage was supported by the RF Government, and another suggestion was to initiate a system of preferential credit lending for major repairs.
“The implementation of the strategy in the utility sphere’s development until 2020 will allow us to enhance living conditions, up-date utilities objects and use more efficient technologies and provide for the availability of blocks of flats for people with limited mobility”, Mikhail Menn explained.
One of the most discussed topics was the subject of housing construction. The price of a square meter decreased by 1,500 rubles in 2015. Free housing privatization terms and the “Housing for a Russian family” program prolongation were adopted.
The Minister also stressed that the basic legislative norms have already been formed.