OREANDA-NEWS. Dmitry Medvedev’s opening remarks:  Good afternoon. Our commission is expanding, soon this room will no longer hold all of us. But if this corresponds to the volume of investment, that's probably okay.

Today we are holding the first meeting of the Commission on Monitoring Foreign Investment of the year. The agenda is in accordance with the commission’s statute, which considers foreign investors’ applications for bargains with strategic assets.

There are a number of bargains in the pharmaceutical industry, minerals, and several other deals that we will consider with you.

And a few words on last year’s results. The period was not easy for us, but the general volume of foreign investment into the Russian economy totaled over USD 50 billion, which is nearly the same as in 2011. As compared to the global dynamics, this is not a bad result. We are among the top five or six world leaders in receiving foreign investment, with foreign direct investment globally reduced by nearly 20%. I recently gave a report in the State Duma and presented these numbers.

Regarding the activities of the commission, the volume of bargains upon which the decisions were made totals nearly USD 3 billion, and investment  as part of the business projects that were approved totals nearly five billion roubles.

Here’s another interesting point – last year we received applications from investors from Kazakhstan (four) and Azerbaijan. This shows that investment cooperation is being stepped up in the CIS as well. This is a good thing. 

The Government is taking steps toward improving legislation on monitoring foreign investment in strategic spheres. In several cases it will be made more liberal. As a result, the number of appeals on these issues has decreased by almost twice in 2012 as compared with 2011.

Of course, we should take a balanced approach to this and encourage long-term investment projects in the manufacturing of high-tech competitive products.

All procedures should be sensible and understandable for bona fide investors. At the same time we must by all means protect our strategic interests – as regards both security and the fulfillment of social commitments to employees and citizens that use the services of the companies monitored by the commission.

The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has made proposals on improving legislation. We’ll discuss them and make decisions on specific deals.

I’d like to say a few words about such a high-profile issue as the use of the bio resources of our seas. We have addressed this issue several times and we must finally put things in order here. In principle, we have done the work, and both today and for the future, we proceed from a simple premise – Russian companies should catch bio resources in our seas. Incidentally, we haven’t invented anything new here, and it’s not because our approach is so tough. No, this is the worldwide practice and other countries act in the same way. These are our bio resources and this is the only reason why we must control them better. That said we welcome the contribution of foreign investors to the stock of such companies, especially in the processing industry.

We’ve discussed this issue more than once. I’ve instructed profile ministries and departments to conduct practical work with our foreign partners and our fishering companies. Mr Artemyev (Igor Artemyev, Head of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service) will report to us on what has been done and whether there are still some problems.

Let’s start discussing the agenda.