Union parliamentarians advocate for reducing program approval timelines to six months

Union parliamentarians advocate for reducing the approval period for union programs to six months. This was announced to journalists today by Viktor Kosourov, Chairman of the Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia for Economic Policy, and First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee for Science, Education, Culture, and Information Policy, as reported by a BELTA correspondent.

Parliamentarians and the Standing Committee of the Union State have prepared and sent a new methodology for forming union programs for согласование to the ministries and departments of Belarus and Russia. Its essence is to ensure that no more than six months pass from the application to the program's launch. Currently, program approval takes from one and a half to three years. "On the one hand, there are objective reasons for this, caused by the different structures of ministries and departments in Belarus and Russia, but on the other hand, there are many bureaucratic delays," the parliamentarian believes.

The new document will be submitted for consideration by the Council of Ministers of the Union State in the near future.

The next meeting of the Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia for Economic Policy is taking place today in Vitebsk. Its participants are discussing the state and prospects of trade and economic cooperation between the Vitebsk region and the regions of Russia. The agenda of the meeting also includes the discussion of a prospective project in the economic sphere of the Union State: the concept of the scientific and technical program "Creation of a scientific and technological platform for the pharmaceutical industry for the production of highly effective and biologically safe functional food products, hygiene products, and new-generation medicines based on lactoferrin and other human proteins." The project is planned for implementation in 2014-2018 and is being prepared for consideration at a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State.

In addition to the allied parliamentarians, representatives of the Standing Committee of the Union State, ministries and departments of Belarus and Russia, the scientific community of the two countries, as well as the leadership of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee and the Vitebsk Regional Council of Deputies are taking part in the commission meeting.