OREANDA-NEWS. January 29, 2013. Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Dmitry Medvedev: Today, we’ll once again discuss our idea of establishing the International Financial Centre. As we have already agreed, let’s discuss the solution of infrastructure issues and specific options for the Financial Centre’s location, and not just system related issues linked with the drafting of basic regulatory documents and organisational issues, because this is probably no less important than those decisions with regard to legal and organisational infrastructure.

To distract ourselves from the current agenda a bit, then I’ll say that the Davos forum was held last week, and some of you present here attended the event. As usual, the forum passed in a rather energetic manner. Generally speaking, the business community remains interested in Russia. And, of course, the extent to which we can exploit this interest, our ability to make our national financial system more competitive, to increase the role of the rouble in international financial settlements and to stake our overall claims in the financial markets depend on our joint work.

The International Financial Centre will be used to attract and allocate Russian and foreign investment capital. This can be accomplished by involving more investors, through the complete integration on the financial markets and by creating a favourable regulatory environment. In effect, you and I have been addressing these issues over the past few years. I cannot say that we have succeeded in every area. But at any rate a basic regulatory environment and an organisational environment are, on the whole, currently evolving. Right now, we must pool our law-making efforts and our efforts to create the required structural facilities and to address an entire range of organisational tasks.

In the near future, this February, the Government will examine projects for the Development of Financial and Insurance Markets and the Establishment of the International Financial Centre state programme. The Government will also review the road map to establish the International Financial Centre and to improve the financial climate. We’ll have to create an effective and stable regulatory environment, which will encourage the creation and development of modern financial products and services for all investors, and which will ensure high standards of corporate governance and, of course, the protection of investor property rights and interests. International events show that this remains an extremely important objective. They are telling us about this, which means that not everything is okay in Russia.

Apart from institutional conditions, the physical infrastructure of the centre is also quite important. This includes the location of specific facilities and the way various facilities and banks will be inter-connected. Of course, this also includes urban-development solutions and utility mains and lots more. We must think about the location of the main International Financial Centre facilities. Various options, which should be carefully studied, are possible here. We could do nothing and confine ourselves to the available facilities.

 But we must consider the fact that Moscow is a huge city and that various agencies and institutions, primarily banks and consulting companies, are located so far apart and are spread over the whole area.  This is a difficult but probably feasible solution. There are other options we have already talked about such as placing IFC institutions close to each other, thus simplifying the building of the necessary infrastructure. In any case, we need to take the following aspects into account: to review the implementation plans of the project and their terms, to define the finance sources and to assess the opportunity to use investment money. We also need to coordinate the cooperation of the federal, regional and local governments, and finally think about how the whole idea is supposed to work. In any case, I would like to return to the issues we began with. To attract investors to our IFC, it needs to be attractive to bankers, to high-skilled experts (to a large extent those living abroad), and of course, for us to work there conveniently.

Let’s discuss these issues and start with the current situation and what has already been done. Please, Mr Voloshin (Alexander Voloshin, Head of the Working Group for Establishing an International Financial Centre in Russia under the Presidential Council for the Development of the Russian Financial Markets), take the floor.

More to be posted soon...