Medvedev holds meeting on light industry
GORKI. May 12 (Interfax) - Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has held a meeting on the situation in Russia's light industry sector.
"Arrangements were made to examine the situation in one of the economic sectors. We can say straight off, it is not the lightest [easiest], despite its name. This concerns the situation in light industry. We will now talk about the difficulties, the prospects and possible proposals for development of the industry," Medvedev said ahead of the meeting's start.
The meeting is being held in the context of carrying out the decisions contained in the anti-crisis plan, he said.
"Afterwards we will continue this conversation in an expanded format, perhaps at one of the plants," Medvedev said to conclude his opening remarks.
"Due to the difficult economic situation that has taken shape recently, output of goods from light industry has declined," he said. The year-on-year decline in the first quarter amounted to 6.4% for the textile industry, 31.7% for sewing, 6.6% for the leatherworking and 19.1% for footwear. However, cloth production has virtually stabilized.
The Cabinet cited several causes for the decline, including "outdated equipment, reliance on imported inputs whose prices have risen even higher and fairly stiff competition on this market," the government press center said.
The federal government provides ongoing support to the sector. Almost 1.7 billion rubles was allocated from the Russian budget in 2014 and about 1.5 billion rubles is allocated this year. The enterprises also receive subsidies on loans for technical re-equipment, raw material purchasing and creation of new capacity.
Additional support measures are currently being drawn up, including expanding the state guarantee mechanism to include light industry and providing support from the Industry Development Fund.
