OREANDA-NEWS. April 25, 2011. V.V. Putin’s opening address Good afternoon esteemed colleagues.

Let’s remember once again about what we spoke in our report at the State Duma. As you know we spoke about large-scale development programs in the regions, various production sectors, the housing market, the industrial sector, infrastructure, modernization and launching of large-scale projects.

It’s quite evident that Vnesheconombank is supposed to play a key role in implementing all these plans acting as our leading development institution and consulting center and using its credit resources.

We also expect Russia’s Export Credit and Investment Insurance Agency to work effectively. I’d like to remind you that this Agency is being established in the form of a joint stock company with Vnesheconombank’s 100-percent participation. This new agency is designed to assist our exporters in tapping international markets and we should above all support exporters that operate in innovation sectors. The Government considered, prepared and submitted appropriate amendments to legislation to the State Duma.

At the same time, we have to address all organizational issues associated with the operation of the Russian Export Credit and Investment Insurance Agency and prepare a definitive strategy of its activity.

We have also to create additional instruments to raise capital for the Russian economy. It is for this purpose a Russian Fund of Direct Investments is being set up. We should discuss today an issue of establishing a special managing company for this Fund. The Fund will be responsible for raising foreign long-term investments for the Russian economy intended above all for such high-technology sectors (here I mean innovation projects) as power engineering, oil sector, space exploration, pharmaceutics and etc. The Fund’s managing company with a charter capital of 300 million rubles is to be founded by Vnesheconombank. And in its operation the Fund will be able to rely on Vnesheconombank’s financial and expert potential. In my opinion, this approach is bound to establish the Fund’s credibility with the international investment community and create favorable conditions for its start and further operation.

Besides these systems issues, we’ll also discuss a number of other purely production issues and among them I’d like to single out the one of a credit line worth 39 billion rubles intended for creating a joint venture between Ford and our Russian company Sollers that has been operating in the automotive industry for several years. This is a young company but it has been operating for several years and has shown itself to a good advantage. At our request, the company is expanding its production including as we know in the Far East.

I believe that the project in point is a very interesting, much needed initiative. The partnership between Russia’s company Sollers and Ford would make it possible to attract new technologies, significantly increase production facilities of the companies already operating successfully in various regions of the Russian Federation, for example in Tatarstan (the city of Elabuga) and in the Leningrad region. The credit resources we are to make available today will be used to increase production localization. This is fully in line with requirements the Russian Government formulates for our foreign partners. The money is to be used to set up the production of component base on the territory of our country. Suffice it to say that in the future the level of localization at Ford-Sollers joint venture is supposed to reach 60%.

The launch of such a large-scale project is especially important today against the backdrop of the Russian auto market growth. In the first quarter of this year the output of cars in our country increased by 2.2 times. And I’d also like to remind you that we made a decision to additionally fund the car utilization program. All these factors form a good basis for the launch of this new large-scale project.

Let’s get down to work.