UPDATE: Russia’s Medvedev says import substitution task realistic

(Adds agriculture minister’s comments in seventh paragraph)

ST. PETERSBURG, Jan 28 (PRIME) -- Russia is quite able to replace foreign equipment with domestic one, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday at a meeting of the government commission on import substitution.

“The production is modern, the model range is absolutely new and is in demand not only in our country, but abroad as well,” Medvedev said after visiting the St. Petersburg Tractor Plant. “It indicates that import substitution is working,” he said.

“In 2009, during the economic crisis, their (the plant’s) production was almost fourfold lower, than in 2015, because support measures were not working, because the market was not structured correctly, because there were no modern models which are being produced now,” Medvedev said.

Medvedev also said he had approved a program to support transport machine building this year.

“We plan to support investment projects for modernization and expansion of capacities for production of large car casting, as well as joint projects with foreign railway engineering producers,” he said.

The government will allocate additional 10 billion rubles to support agricultural equipment producers in 2016, Medvedev also said.

Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachyov said the sum will allow farmers to buy around 20,000 equipment items.

Medvedev also said that amid sanctions, it is necessary to buy technologies, not a package of services, including in the oil production industry.

“Amid sanctions, which among other things limit a transfer of technologies to us, it is especially important to get away from the practice of buying not technologies, but a complex of services. Various sectors are using them, to tell straight, including during oil production,” Medvedev said.

“We certainly should create our own technologies, own production and own market of services,” he said.

(78.9969 rubles – U.S. $1)

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