Deputy Minister of Economy of the Russian Federation: Russian SEZs reach self-sufficiency

Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Dmitry Vakhrukov spoke about the results of the activities of special economic zones and the assessment of their effectiveness as part of the presentation of the VI National Rating of Special Economic Zones together with the Association of Clusters, Technoparks and SEZs of Russia (ACTS).

“The SEZ mechanism continues to show its self-sufficiency for the state budget. The volume of payments paid to the budget by SEZ residents is already almost 3 times higher than the amount of benefits received. Due to state support, residents reimbursed their costs for creating jobs and manufacturing products, and the state returned to the budget all allocated funds in full,” Dmitry Vakhrukov noted.

According to the Deputy Minister, in total, residents paid 303 billion rubles in taxes, customs payments and insurance fees. At the same time, benefits worth 102 billion rubles were received. Resident payments also exceeded budgetary investments in the infrastructure of the SEZ. About 237.2 billion rubles were allocated from the federal and regional budgets to create the infrastructure of the SEZ.

“Now we have a two-factor assessment of the effectiveness of the SEZ. The first is our federal assessment, where the key indicator is the return of budget funds. The second performance evaluation is an independent evaluation in which the business itself and experts evaluate the investment attractiveness of the sites in terms of ease of doing business. Based on the results of this assessment, ACTS annually compiles the Business Navigator of the SEZ,” Dmitry Vakhrukov said.