OREANDA-NEWS. August 27, 2012. A roundtable “Topical aspects of the development of Siberia and the Far East in the context of the upcoming APEC summit and the Baikal Economic Forum” has taken place at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Russia.

Debate participants expressed their opinions of topical aspects of the agendas of the APEC business summit and the Baikal Economic Forum, “Public-Private Partnership for Accelerated Development of the Baikal Region and the Far East.”

Sergey Nebrenchin, General Director of CCI Inform LLC, opened and chaired the roundtable.

JSC International Center for Regional Development General Director Igor Melamed described the APEC business summit as a landmark event. The most competent expert communities of the country are working on the summit program, he said. The summit will have the busiest agenda ever, which means a number of documents important for Russia and the world economic community may be signed, Igor Melamed stressed. There are all grounds to believe that the summit will have inspiring results in the near and long-term prospect.

The Security Council of the Russian Federation adopted fundamental documents with regard to the development of Siberia and the Far East back in 2006. The strategy of the development of these territories was endorsed in 2010. A new edition of the federal target program of the development of Siberia and the Far East is being drafted for the period until 2018, Igor Melamed said. The implementation of the largest projects – the Vostochny Space Center in the Amur region, the development of Southern Primorye (the construction of two big shipyards) and Southern Yakutia (the construction of a private railroad line and the development of mineral deposits) – has begun alongside the provision of orders to key Far Eastern defense plants, such as the Arsenyev Helicopter Plant.

Yet many systemic problems of the regions remain unsolved: Siberian and Far Eastern transport and energy infrastructure requires massive investments and, what is the most important, synchronous and planned development depending on the resource capacities. For many systemic reasons, the Baikal-Amur Railway has failed to reach its rated capacity (100,000 tonnes of cargo per year). The development of certain promising mineral deposits is slow, and there is a big deficit of labor force (the overall population of the Far Eastern district is only 6.3 million people), Igor Melamed concluded.

Russia may integrate into the global economic community precisely through the APEC, Chairman of the CCI of Russia Logistics Committee Oleg Dunaev said. If this chance is missed, the country will remain a ‘regional’ nation and deprive itself of modernization prospects.

The interest in cooperation with Russia in the APEC framework taken lately by business communities of Australia and Singapore should shape up the Russian strategy of the development of Siberia and the Far East. It is necessary to develop the vast space between Europe and Asia as a global transport corridor with an emphasis on industrial clusters attached to it, Oleg Dunaev said. This solution would significantly cut industrial and social costs, increase population mobility manifold, and improve the quality of business climate. It would also be expedient to form financial and economic centers in Siberia capable of drawing substantial investments in the upgrading of industries and transport and logistics infrastructure, both railways and high-speed motorways. The task may be solved by an international alliance of interested countries, which have rather high industrial technologies, Oleg Dunaev concluded.

General Director of the Center for Strategic Assessments and Forecasts Sergey Grinyayev stressed the need for immediate systemic solutions in the development of Siberia and the Far East. In his opinion, Chinese experience of the recovery from the global financial and economic crisis through shifting the focus on the domestic market should become a lesson for Russia: in view of the ‘second wave’ of the crisis Russia should use its resources for developing Siberia and the Far East as the biggest domestic markets of the country and form financial and economic centers on their territories.

The idea of forming Siberian and Far Eastern financial centers gained support of Deputy Director of the CCI of Russia Center for Public Relations and Media Vladimir Gridnev and Cochairman of the National Union of Public Experts, Sotsialnaya Expertiza Journal Editor in Chief Alexander Prostov.

The roundtable participants called for enhancing the role of the CCI of Russia system in the development of Siberian and Far Eastern regions and supported the elaboration of an efficient system of information support to the revival of the Russian geostrategic territories.