Patrushev announced the allocation of more than 450 billion rubles for exploration in 2024

Dmitry Patrushev, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, spoke on April 25 at the board of the Federal Agency for Subsoil Use, which summed up the work of the agency in 2024 and outlined plans for 2025.

According to him, Russia has a unique mineral resource base, which includes about 230 types of minerals.

"Thanks to this, Russia ranks among the world leaders in reserves of natural gas, diamonds, gold, nickel, coal and other resources. The extraction of raw materials is one of the leading areas of our economy. It generates a third of the consolidated budget revenues and allows the industry to develop sustainably," Patrushev said.

The Deputy Prime Minister noted that the main task of Rosnedra is to ensure effective management of the state subsoil fund. Currently, the agency administers almost 24,000 licenses for prospecting, exploration and production of minerals.

"The most important thing is to ensure control over the quality of license execution. Rosnedra must ensure the continuity of exploration and exploration, as timely replenishment and sufficiency of reserves for the needs of the economy depend on this. The state creates conditions for attracting investments in the geological exploration of the subsurface. In 2024, a record amount was allocated for exploration — more than 450 billion rubles," he stressed.

At the same time, the Deputy Prime Minister set the task of providing a search reserve for scarce types of minerals, for which the government plans to allocate more than 50 billion rubles for geological exploration in the next three years.

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About 70 joint projects in the field of natural resources development are at the initial stage.

Dmitry Patrushev also drew attention to the need to attract young highly qualified specialists to the industry. According to him, at the level of higher and secondary vocational education, great emphasis should be placed from the very beginning on practical training and the development of targeted learning.

"We must not forget about increasing the responsibility of the subsurface users themselves, including by preventing the appearance of so-called "dormant" licenses. Their list also includes deposits of scarce raw materials. This needs to be corrected at the interdepartmental level, including involving the supervisory authorities. Each such license will have to be analyzed in the near future. In this case, the resources are idle, although they should be profitable. If the entrepreneur is not ready to develop the project, the right of use must be terminated. And the site was transferred to a bona fide company," said the Deputy Prime Minister.

The Deputy Prime Minister also stressed that measures to economically stimulate business are also necessary - subsurface users should be interested in high—quality development of deposits, and payments for use should correspond to the value of the deposits. He placed special emphasis on the instruction of the President of Russia to form chains for the search and development of mineral deposits in the Arctic. In particular, it is necessary to ensure the extraction and deep processing of rare and rare-earth metals in this zone.

Concluding his speech, Patrushev added that the implementation of the Strategy for the Development of the mineral Resource base until 2050 largely depends on the qualitative solution of all the identified tasks.

On February 25, Freedom Finance Global analyst Vladimir Chernov told Izvestia that companies in their exploration, production and production should benefit from the race for rare earth metals (REM), as they will increase revenue from the development and scaling of this industry in the Russian Federation.