Rustam Minnikhanov: Increasing food production should be the main focus of our work

On March 23, speaking at a meeting of the regional Security Council on providing food security, Tatarstan President Rustam Minniknanov said that strategic significance of food supply is comparable to the financial resource and energy security.

Tatarstan State Counsellor Mintimer Shaimiev, Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Food and Agriculture of the republic Marat Akhmetov, Tatarstan Security Council Secretary Airat Shafigullin and other officials took part in the meeting at the Kazan Kremlin.

Minnikhanov reminded that Russian President Vladimir Putin in his message to the Federal Assembly set a target to fully provide the home market with domestic food by 2020.

“Food security involves not only a certain level of self-sufficiency, but affordability of food products for the population. Of course, the problem of food supplies cannot be solved at the regional level, it is national-wide. Nevertheless, increasing food production, boosting consumption of food by the population, increasing quality of produced and consumed foodstuffs, as well as improving effectiveness of management in this field should be the main focus of our work,” he noted.

Minnikhanov emphasized that a complex of measures aimed at developing agricultural production is being implemented in the republic, showing positive results. Last year, cost of the gross agricultural product totaled to 214 billion roubles, the share of gross value added of GRP reached 7.8 per cent.  Tatarstan takes the first position for milk production, the second for potato harvest, the fourth for meat and poultry among the Russian regions. Also, the republic is a top ten grain producer.

According to Minnikhanov, the republic has achieved some indicators of food independence set forth in the Russia's Food Security Doctrine, with some exceptions such as vegetables, fruits and berries, fish.

Minnikhanov has given an errand to pay special attention to solving the issues related to the programme of import substitution. “It is necessary to carry out a detailed analysis of the opportunities and threats for agriculture. This relates to both food production and spare parts for agricultural machinery of foreign manufacture. In addition, import substitution should include not only financial support measures, but also organizational arrangements to determine the most marketable food products and agricultural raw materials, the analysis of available production and storage capacities as well as reduction of administrative costs,” Tatarstan President said.