Institutions for Trade and Industry and for the Mining Sector, the Council for Tariff Affairs, the Tariff Committee and the Department of Railway Affairs, with the exception of the departments in charge of financial settlements between the treasury and railway companies, were transferred to its composition from the Ministry of Finance.

In view of the approach of the advancing German troops to the industrialised regions of the empire (Varshava, Riga) in June 1915, the members of the Military–Technical Committee of the All–Russian City Union sent a letter to the Minister of Trade and Industry Vsevolod Shakhovskoy: "It is absolutely inadmissible to continue preserving in such places as Riga, Varshava and the like, large manufacturing enterprises that prepare items of military equipment or are in any way connected with this business.

The coordination of the work was entrusted in July 1915 to the head of the Sestroretsk Arms Factory, Major General Anatoliy Zalyubovskiy.

[6] Before September 1, 1915, 172 enterprises were evacuated from Riga: to Moskva, Petrograd, Nizhniy Novgorod, as well as to the southern provinces – Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Donets Basin, where metalworking factories mainly moved.

[2] From other regions, due to unsatisfactory organization of actions, only a few enterprises were evacuated, and some of the evacuees never resumed production.