In comments to RuNews24.ru, Arsen Khachatryan, member of the Board of the Autonomous Nonprofit Organization Agency for Digital Development, spoke about the current state of the import substitution market, its successes and problems faced by the country.
To date, significant successes have been achieved in certain industries. For example, in the food industry and agriculture, the results are evident.
“We have seen a noticeable increase in domestic production and the quality of Russian food products has significantly improved,” Khachatryan notes.
New technologies are being actively introduced in enterprises, which makes it possible to increase both the volume of production and its degree of diversification.
In addition, in recent years, many worthy wines produced only in Russia have appeared on the shelves of Russian stores.
“Russian wine has become not just affordable, but a truly fashionable element of consumption,” Khachatryan adds, emphasizing the importance of creating an efficient supply chain for the wine industry.
The fashion industry is also undergoing noticeable changes. Stores with domestic clothing, footwear and accessories are opening in shopping centers, which confirms the growing interest in Russian brands. However, despite the obvious successes, there are still problem areas. In particular, poultry and some agricultural crops are still heavily dependent on imports, which limits the effectiveness of import substitution.
Complex high-tech products remain a major challenge. The oil and gas sector, for example, remains dependent on imported equipment and technology. This becomes particularly noticeable when complex directional and horizontal wells need to be constructed. In the same vein, problems are also seen in the advances in the mining industry, where key equipment has yet to be replaced.
“In the coming years, the import substitution course will continue and we should focus on the substitution of critical goods and technologies, such as pharmaceuticals and electronic equipment,” the expert explained.
The main difficulty is that being under sanctions, the Russian market is limited. The country's population is only 146 million people, which represents only 2% of the world's population.
Experts estimate that the minimum market size for the successful launch of high-tech projects should be at least 700 million people.
“Unfortunately, neither Russia nor the CIS/ODCB countries as a whole can provide the necessary market volume, which leads to an increase in the cost of products and their uncompetitiveness,” summarizes Arsen Khachatryan.
Thus, despite clear successes in some sectors, it is necessary to find ways to solve the problems associated with a high level of dependence on foreign technologies and goods in order to ensure further effective development of import substitution in Russia.