RUSSIAN PC MANUFACTURER AND STATE SUPPORT

«The promised three years are waiting for»– to withstand these deadlines for fulfilling obligations, a well-known proverb has taught us all. The wisdom of the people in such cases is a storehouse of applied knowledge. So both the domestic manufacturer of computer equipment and the domestic software developer are waiting for the promised state support. And the time, if you measure it with an unusual Slavic hour, in which 1.5 hours actually passed, was negligible. But there are plenty of willing –!

Six hundred applications were sent to the grant committees, whose hard work was announced by the domestic IT development Fund back in May. But until today, none of them has been considered. Like no long-suffering Russian computer manufacturer has gone through a fine sieve of the selection procedure. The fate of everyone who represents the Russian production of personal computers or the development of Russian software, according to a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Finance, will be decided in October.

What are you interested in? Naturally, it is about grant support for the development, refinement and introduction of its own digital solutions to the Russian IT market. In short, everything that a Russian PC manufacturer and a Russian software developer have only hinted about since the end of April 2022.

Now about the size of the grant. There is a price range from 20 million to 6 billion rubles. These grants are designed to compensate up to eighty percent of the costs incurred by a domestic manufacturer of computer equipment and a domestic software developer when developing their own innovative projects.

If compared with 2021, the application activity this year is almost 2.5 times higher. But do not flatter yourself. Not all of last year's applications were supported by the state ruble: out of 250, only 62 projects were lucky. In terms of money, it came out in the range of 4.5 billion rubles.

According to the assurance of a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Finance, work on the mistakes to bring the selection procedure into the proper form has been carried out. And in 2022, it has become much simpler. Today, the same Russian manufacturer of monitors, he is also a Russian manufacturer of monoblocks, can present his idea in a structured presentation. And a year earlier, the same Russian computer manufacturer gave up already at the stage of preparing sophisticated documentation.

But even a year later, there are plenty of ambiguities. It is only clear that the very timing of the evaluation of the bid company for an effective confrontation with the world's bourgeois IT companies is extremely slow. Intentions were reported to reduce the review period from an inhumane 39 working days to two weeks. And no one can explain the selection procedure and the mechanism of project support intelligently in the circles of Russian IT officials.

You don't have to be a prophet in your Homeland to understand that the tender documentation of the 2022 sample is still inferior to the requirements of all innovations. Even taking into account the tasks set by the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and the designated position of the Ministry of Finance.

Specially trained people will be convinced of the appropriateness of allocating funds. These talented and ambitious Russian IT industry specialists will be brought together under the auspices of specialized industrial competence centers and exactly the same centers for the development of Russian system-wide and applied software. Experts, based on applications, will build a rating and present it to the bright eyes of the grants committee. Among the experts will be customers who have already thrown up a list of three and a half hundred needs for various kinds of IT products. The largest customers have found three hundred domestic developers on the Russian IT market, and each, imagine, has found two sensible solutions!

How can a simple domestic manufacturer of computer equipment comment on all this tricky balancing act? We are ready to work for the benefit of our country and we have solutions to strengthen its digital sovereignty. We are aware that state support is the territory of the law and special economic responsibility. And at the same time, I would like to heartily say to the IT officials who had a hand in creating this cumbersome procedure: do not complicate it, brothers!