Mikhail Mishustin holds strategic session on ways to increase labour productivity

Mikhail Mishustin: "According to the Federal State Statistics Service, labour productivity in the main economic sectors began to grow and has increased by over 1.5 percent in the 1st quarter of this year. In the ICT sector and in agriculture, productivity grew by approximately five percent."

Mikhail Mishustin's opening remarks:

Colleagues, good afternoon.

Today we will address a topic that is of critical importance for the country's economy, the GDP growth, and for improving the wellbeing of our citizens. This topic is labour productivity.

The personnel shortage is one of the current challenges. This is reflected in the unemployment rate, which has remained at a historic low of 2.2 percent as of the end of April.

Launching new projects requires not only financing and equipment, but also qualified and skilled personnel. Moreover, given the emphasis on achieving technological leadership, this primarily means employees with a strong educational background and a high level of professional expertise.

In these circumstances, increasing labour productivity should become one of the most effective tools at our disposal. It represents a major reserve for economic growth and a key factor in advancing our economy to a fundamentally new technological level.

This is a complex task. It requires coordinated efforts by individual enterprises, across entire industries, and throughout the economy as a whole. It also calls for the modernisation of fixed assets, the introduction of new equipment, accelerated digitalisation and robotics, and a widespread adoption of artificial intelligence.

The Government is working on this issue systematically. Based on last year's results, lean manufacturing projects implemented at individual enterprises increased output by an average of nearly 60 percent, while production lead times and excess inventories were reduced by approximately one-third.

Much depends on the enterprises themselves. It is important for businesses to take a more active approach to eliminating unnecessary operations and inefficient processes. We must systematically identify and eliminate waste, which will also help increase revenue and enhance the competitiveness of both products and services.

In line with the President's instruction, a comprehensive plan for structural changes in the economy through 2030 has been developed and approved. The first section of the plan is devoted to employment.

Currently, the demand for personnel is being met through transforming the labour market. We are building a flexible system of vocational education that is aligned with today's challenges.

We will use the single logic: measures to raise productivity shall be synchronised with the objectives of the Personnel national project. This will let us solve the task of adapting the labour market to the requirements of economic development and technological sovereignty comprehensively.

The network of competence centres is also being expanded. Almost 20 sectoral entities both in the real sector and in the social area have been established to supplement federal and regional organisations. For example, they operate in the civilian-oriented industry, transport, tourism, construction and agriculture, as well as in healthcare, culture, sports, education and social services. Programmes encompassing about 52 million people have been developed for them. They account for over two thirds of the people engaged in the economy. One of the critical tasks is to redistribute the labour resources within the sectors and among them so that additional potential is unlocked for raising their efficiency, which should result in a growth of Russia's GDP.

We work at all levels: from targeted support for large and medium-sized enterprises that encourage a flow of personnel to the spheres with high added value, to the replication of best practices in the small, medium-sized and micro-businesses. And, of course, we help in every way - we also work systematically here - to reduce the administrative and regulatory load.

This equally applies to social areas, where excessive reporting and non-core functions are reduced, and digital solutions are utilised, where they really simplify the procedure, rather than just convert unnecessary bureaucratic procedures into the electronic form.

The relevant IT platform Productivity.rf to support independent adoption of efficient measures has also been created.

This work brings fruit as well. According to the Federal State Statistics Service, labour productivity in the main economic sectors began to grow and has increased by over 1.5 percent in the 1^st quarter of this year. In the ICT sector and in agriculture, productivity grew by approximately five percent. Together with businesses we should do everything for these indexes to grow permanently. It is also important to cover other areas of the economy.

Let us discuss in detail what results have been achieved in specific areas and what additional steps are required.