The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
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Agricultural innovations need support
Trubachevo is the largest producer of protected vegetable crops in Tomsk Oblast. The opening ceremony for the second phase of construction of the facility in September 2013 was attended by the Russian Minister of Agriculture Nikolay Fedorov. The capacity of the farm is up to 2,000 tons of cucumbers, 700 tons of tomatoes and 2 million bushes of parsley, lettuce, dill and basil per year. Trubachevo also grows roses and other flowers. Total capital invested in the facility is over 1.2bn rubles.
The community was developing together with the facility – a road was built, water and gas lines installed, and many new houses appeared. “We will keep on building houses for our employees. The town of Trubachevo will continue to grow,” says the head of the facility Galina Shanina.
However, today the farm is experiencing financial hardships. The procedure for allocation of government subsidies for the development of the facility and the amount of subsidies have changed. The annual debt burden has approached the annual turnover of the company. Decisions on subsidizing large loans are made in the Ministry of Agriculture. One of Trubachevo’s applications has been under review in the Ministry since last year.
As Speaker of the Oblast Duma Oksana Kozlovskaya said, "I would like to address my colleagues from district Dumas. We, deputies of representative and legislative bodies at all levels – from town to federation – should be aware of our accountability for such changes in the rules in the middle of the game. Although your regions do not implement large scale capital projects, and the biggest project is just half a million rubles, you should support and develop such public-private partnership initiatives. They are the future.
Support initiatives for the agricultural industry such as helping companies to buy most advanced technologies and partially compensating their cost of energy resources, should be transparent with respect to both allocation and payoff procedures. All members of the Coordination Council agree with that. Businessmen in remote locations often struggle with understanding those rules, even though for their business it is a question of survival.
We are used to thinking that in Tomsk Oblast innovative business is about university complexes, radioelectronics, and information technologies. At the same time in the agricultural industry there are such facilities as the Trubachevo farm. I believe our colleagues in district Dumas fully understand the level of competition in today’s agricultural industry. In order to stay competitive, they should take efforts to reasonably support growing enterprises in their districts."
