OREANDA-NEWS.  On 15 October a working meeting of Cherkizovo Group Board of Directors Chairman Igor Babayev and the Group’s General Director Sergei Mikhailov with the Voronezh Region Governor Aleksei Gordeyev took place.

In the course of the meeting the parties discussed a number of issues relating to the progress of Cherkizovo Group investment projects realization on the territory of Voronezh Region, which projects are included in the social and economic development program of the Region. The Cherkizovo Group top managers informed the Region’s head that Agroresurs-Voronezh CJSC which is the operator of investment project ‘Hybrid Hog Raising in Voronezh Region’ has completed the construction of four module one yards for raising and fattening 100 thousand heads of pigs per year. All in all in the course of the project realization it is planned to set up two hog raising and fattening modules on the territory of Nizhnedevitski and Semilukski municipal districts.

The parties also touched upon the problem of obtaining by investors of federal subsidies for repaying interest rates on credits.

Igor Babayev pointed out that there are no complaints in respect of financial support provision on the regional level. The main difficulties are expressly related to non-availability of federal financing. Lack of subsidies was referred to as one of the principal factors preventing entrepreneurs from making long-term plans in the agricultural sphere.

‘I have been raising this subject at the highest level since spring of this year’, agreed Aleksei Gordeyev. ‘There have been instructions by both RF President Vladimir Putin and by RF Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. The subject of subsidies has been repeatedly raised and continues to be raised at meetings of different levels. We go on working on our level and hope that little by little the issue will be settled, the debts will be repaid.’

Igor Babayev also addressed to the Governor a request to render support in cutting down the time period for electrical substation construction in Nizhnedevitski District where the Company is realizing one of its investment projects. The Governor set the task to study possible options of finding a way out of the existing situation. He stressed that the regional authorities are interested in further successful development of Cherkizovo Group OJSC projects on the territory of the Region.