Over the past ten years, Russia has increased its food exports by a factor of 2.5 and has become one of the top twenty largest suppliers to global markets. Russian President Vladimir Putin made this statement at a meeting with participants of the 21st forum and congress of the Delovaya Rossiya National Public Organisation, according to the Kremlin’s website.
“In recent years – I believe over the past ten years – we have increased the volume of food exports to global markets by 2.5 times and have become one of the top twenty largest food suppliers to the market,” said Vladimir Putin.
The President backed a request from Stefan Durr, chair of the Delovaya Rossiya Committee on Dairy Farming, to maintain support for transport and logistics costs when entering new markets. Just over 12 billion rubles (US$144.4 million) have been earmarked for these purposes in next year’s draft budget.
Russia’s Minister of Agriculture, Oksana Lut, confirmed that support for logistics has been maintained. According to her, exports of dairy products this year have risen by 21 per cent in value terms, whilst exports of dried dairy products to Algeria have quadrupled.
Durr also asked for the mechanism of intergovernmental commissions – which helped establish milk powder exports to Algeria – to be scaled up to cover BRICS countries and other regions.
“Thanks to the mechanism implemented by the Ministry of Economic Development through intergovernmental commissions, we are already exporting a fairly substantial volume of products to Algeria. We ask you to extend this mechanism to other BRICS countries and other regions. […] I am confident that, together with our colleagues who are implementing such projects in other regions, we can achieve very respectable results in this rapidly growing export market. In this context, the export markets are primarily China, the countries of South-East Asia, the Arab world and North Africa,” said Durr.
It is noted that the dairy sector has grown over the past 15 years. Under the food security doctrine, Russia must achieve 90 per cent self-sufficiency in milk. At the end of last year, the figure stood at 85.3 per cent.
The meeting took place via video link. All 89 regional branches of Delovaya Rossiya and over a thousand forum participants were connected.