OREANDA-NEWS. April 30, 2009. V.V Putin’s Opening Address: Good afternoon, Esteemed Colleagues!

Today we are holding our regular meeting of Vnesheconombank’s Supervisory Board. We are to discuss a wide range of issues relating to providing further support for the Russian financial system.

I’d like to remind you that last week we discussed at length the situation both in the banks themselves and the measures to increase lending to the real economy. A number of important decisions were made on improving the mechanism for extending state guarantees and on additional capitalization of banks.

I’d like to stress that the main goal of our efforts remains the same – it is to create the most favorable conditions for businessmen’s access to state funds and to make lending interest rates more acceptable for borrowers.

A key role in these efforts is delegated to Vnesheconombank. It should carry on performing its functions as a bank for development.

By the end of 2009, the amount of development credits extended by Vnesheconombank to the domestic economy will be in excess of 300 billion rubles.

High priority should be given to financing projects of national significance aimed at removing infrastructure restrictions and creating new jobs.

I’d like to ask you to focus on providing support for small and medium-sized enterprises. By the way, Russian state banks will commit 100 billion rubles for these purposes and VEB’s program is estimated at 30 billion rubles.

It’s very important to ensure that committed resources reach the real economy in full and are used extensively to support troubled enterprises. I hope that that the Bank will speed up its efforts to this end.

Under the difficult financial conditions we need to set stricter terms of extending credits. Up until now, Vnesheconombank has already extended credits to six commercial banks for a total amount of 257 billion rubles.

Today, Vnesheconombank’s Supervisory Board has considered 12 more applications worth more than 19 billion rubles. In this respect I would like to say that these funds will be made available under the new rules. This means that credits are to be extended for a period of no less than one year at the Central Bank’s interest refinancing rate plus three percentage points. So, it’s necessary to hold additional negotiations with banks and agree to operate on these terms.

Vnesheconombank would also continue to participate in implementing measures for the financial restructuring of Svyaz-Bank. In order to exercise control over the recovery and possible write-offs of Svyaz-Bank’s bad loans, which arose prior to last year’s October, I recommend to set up a special commission and incorporate representatives of law enforcement authorities into it. VEB’s Supervisory Board should exercise control over work performed.

Vnesheconombank’s issuance of foreign-currency denominated bonds would contribute to increased financing of the Russian economy. This step would make it possible to not only neutralize commercial banks’ excessive foreign currency liquidity but also commit raised funds to serve operations of domestic enterprises on foreign market for refinancing Central Bank funds raised earlier.

In the course of our meeting we are supposed to make a decision on issuing foreign currency denominated bonds for a total amount of 5 billion US dollars.

Today we’ll also analyze the Bank’s work on providing financing for Olympic facilities subject to decisions on providing these financial resources made earlier at the previous meeting of Vnesheconombank’s Supervisory Board.

In total, VEB has already provided financing for eight projects for the total amount of 63 billion rubles. These projects are the Sochi thermal power station, the Sochi Airport, the Port of Sochi Immertinsky, the main Olympic village, the Sochi Sea Port, the rubbish recycling complex in the city of Sochi.

Financing worth 1.8 billion rubles was already opened last week.