OREANDA-NEWS. Transcript of the beginning of the meeting: Dmitry Medvedev: Greetings to you from the State Duma. In the past, the Duma has not been particularly interested in the project you are doing, but at times deputies show more enthusiasm. How are things in general? Recently I attended a conference in your area. I’d like to hear how things are going and what your plans are for the future.

Viktor Vekselberg: Mr Medvedev, according to tradition, we plan to conduct a meeting of the Board of Trustees in the beginning of the year. We suggest holding it on May 17.

Dmitry Medvedev: Let’s fix the date. So you think it should be held in May?

Viktor Vekselberg: We should hold this meeting primarily to review and sum up our performance last year. We are fully ready to submit a report and analyse the results.

The second item that we’d like to see on the meeting’s agenda has to do with the development of a separate sub-programme for the programme that the Government will endorse, entitled Development of an Innovative Eco-System, which will be directly linked to our foundation’s activities. We have drafted the relevant proposals in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance and have presented them to the Ministry of Economic Development. We’d like to submit them to the board for consideration.

Approval of this sub-programme will allow us to conduct long-term planning of all efficiency performance indicators until 2020, as well as financial and economic figures. I think this will be a landmark that will determine the project’s development in the long term, and will give our partners more confidence. I’m referring to our co-investors and startups that are working with us. This is why it is very important for us to discuss this at the meeting. We hope for your support.

We’d like to talk about two more issues. We’d like to analyse the performance of the Intellectual Property Centre, which has drafted several legislative initiatives in the period under review. We’d also like to review a number of proposals connected with support for the licensing of our activities abroad. We’d like to discuss some instruments for supporting our startups…

Dmitry Medvedev: I said in the State Duma today that we are receiving few patents. Our developments are often unprotected. They are being multiplied in every possible way and nobody pays for this, but these are decent funds. Anything else?

Viktor Vekselberg: One more issue, concerning our work with key partners. Today we signed another agreement with the Pipe Metallurgical Company, which has assumed a commitment to create for us a large engineering and research centre. The areas on which the centre will work completely coincide with our subjects of interest – development of new materials, coatings and special steel brands primarily for the pipe industry. This is a very interesting area.

We’d also like to present the results of our Industrial Council, which unites our key partners. I think the members of the Board of Trustees will be very interested to hear about the activities of the council and our partnership with the leading corporations, both Russian and international. We’ll also suggest further areas of our cooperation with key partners.

Dmitry Medvedev: Prepare your proposals and we’ll look at them.