Meeting of the Council on investment environment improvement under the Governor of the Novgorod Region was held just before, on October 5. The participants reviewed a draft Strategy for the region social and economic development until 2025 and amendments to the regional law “On investment activity in the Novgorod region and the protection of investors’ rights”. The regional Ministry of investment policy started the formation of a strategy of social and economic development in late 2017. In the meantime, strategic sessions were organized, the results of which were used for the document formation.
Deputy chairman of the regional Government Evgenii Bogdanov told about the latest changes in the Strategy. He noted it was decided to identify the main areas of concern and promising directions. The list includes demography, health care, education, economic growth, the transportation sphere, food supply, culture, residential facilities and the urban environment, ecology and natural resources. Work in these spheres allows perform the tasks set by the President in the Decree “On the national goals and strategic objectives of the development of the Russian Federation for the period till 2024”.
The document highlights the following strategic directions as well: “The region as an industrial center for export and two megacities”, “The region as a center of national history and identity”, “The region as a university”, “Region as an ecological center for rest and wellness”. Such, according to the Ministry of investment policy experts, the Novgorod region would look like ten years later.
“The industrial GRP of the Novgorod region today makes about 37 percent here, which is two times higher than the industry GDP percent in Russia. Moreover, Novgorod region market is limited, the population is about 600 thousand people, so our industry should work for the entire Russian Federation,” said Evgenii Bogdanov.
Denis Nosachev, Deputy Minister of Investment Policy of the Novgorod Region, told about the investment and tax legislation improvement.
“We came up with an interesting tool, to our mind: we fixed the terms variability of the investor for tax benefits to the project in the regional legislation. When working with a strategic project, an investor is entitled to choose the tax benefits options: either to receive them for three regional taxes only in a part of an investment project, but for a long period – for seven years, or to get benefits for a shorter period – for three years, but to use two tax types only for an investment project and one type of tax – for a company in general. The value of the measure is that the existing enterprises activated,” said Denis Nosachev.
10 investment projects implemented in the Novgorod region in accordance with this law have received regional tax incentives since 2016. Moreover, amendments concerning the investors preferential taxation terms are made to the regional law. In particular, the requirement is introduced to create workplaces when implementing an investment project applying for tax incentives. Every 10 mln capital investment will require formation of at least one workplace.
© The Novgorod Region Government media centre, 2018.