VEB.RF Taking Part in OECD’s Webinar on Russian Cities

⁠VEB.RF is participating in a two-week webinar under the ongoing bilateral project between Russia and the OECD “Review of National Urban Policy in the Russian Federation”. The webinar is designed to organise a two-week discussion focused on the issues and advantages of city development in Russia and receive recommendations from the OECD. The result will be available in 2021 as an OECD report containing proposals to improve housing and construction policies of specific Russian cities.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk noted in his speech at the plenary session of the webinar that “the project is due to close cooperation among the Government, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, DOM.RF, VEB.RF and Russia-OECD Center RANEPA”.

“Such a consortium is consistent with the logic of how the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development works. This means setting useful standards of regulation taking into account all interested parties. Our task is to make cities and regions safe and comfortable. In the next two weeks, the OECD, federal, regional and local authorities, development institutions, and experts will be busy discussing topical issues of city development in Russia and trying to find the best ways to resolve them, which will be detailed in the OECD’s report next year,” Alexei Overchuk emphasised.

“No city can develop without people, a team of managers enabling their city to make continuous progress. We’ve already come a long way in tackling the issue of single-industry towns. We completed a programme to revitalise the most difficult territories. Based on this experience, VEB.RF has launched a more ambitious project for the 100 largest cities. Together we’ll reboot the most important areas of the urban economy, we’ll find the key to a new quality of life. Each team will return to their city not only with new knowledge, but also with practical experience and specific projects,” Irina Makieva said.

She added that VEB.RF’s development programme included helping the largest city to gain knowledge of OECD standards, including in the area of assessing how the cities contribute towards the goals of sustainable development.

“VEB.RF is one of the initiators of this project. The urban economy is top of our agenda. To make the right plans, forecasts and performance evaluations, we decided to set up a system for assessing quality of life in Russian cities. It will be based on OECD tools, namely Regional Well-Being and a tool for measuring the distance to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in cities. The OECD assesses 40 countries, more than 600 regions and about 650 cities, which means these tools will make it possible to compare Russian cities with OECD cities on an international scale. They measure quality of life in cities, from housing conditions to the subjective feeling of well-being, as well as achieving the SDGs endorsed by all UN members. In addition, the OECD indicators are consistent with the goals of at least nine national projects and consequently will make it possible to measure the achievement of the goals of the projects in cities. Furthermore, the OECD indicators are comprehensive and necessitate horizontal cooperation between different levels of governance (national, regional and local) and different areas of governance (departments, directorates etc). VEB.RF has plans to measure quality of life in cities in collaboration with the Agency for Strategic Initiatives. We also intend to continue working with the Ministry of Economic Development in this area to finalise Russia’s City Index and with the Federal Service for State Statistics to align Russian statistics methods with OECD standards,” VEB.RF Senior Vice-President Elena Gushchina said.

Bill Thompson, Head of the Eurasia Division, OECD Global Relations Secretariat, noted the importance of introducing green standards into the urban economy: “In this regard, I’ll note that VEB.RF prepared a green finance standard and is working with the Russian Ministry of Economic Development on creation of a national green finance system. VEB.RF was invited by the OECD to join a group of countries to develop international green finance guidelines in 2021. The work is aimed at harmonising national standards of the countries, which will facilitate international investment in the Russian green finance market.”

The OECD works in Russia under the National Urban Policy Programme, implemented jointly with UN-Habitat and the Cities Alliance. One of the factors in making a city attractive to investors is its image and the availability of information about it. “If a city is involved in the OECD project, this is an opportunity to show the world how the city works and become visible to international investors,” participants noted.

The City Index developed by the Ministry of Economic Development is designed to measure how Russian cities work towards a better quality of life.