OREANDA-NEWS.   Vladimir Putin took part in the plenary session of the 18th St Petersburg International Economic Forum. The Forum is taking place this year under the theme of Sustaining Confidence in a World Undergoing Transformation.
The Forum, which has been an annual event since 1997, brings together heads of state and political leaders, Russian and foreign business leaders, members of the science and academic communities, the media and civil society representatives.

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PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg.

I am pleased to welcome here today our traditional old friends and new guests too, the heads of major Russian and foreign companies, representatives of leading international business associations, everyone who has long-term, strategic priorities with Russia and who shares the idea of partnership in the interest of global development.

We value highly this desire for cooperation and dialogue. We value your independent and responsible position that is free from short-term considerations of the moment.

Consistency and openness are always met with reciprocal steps and mutual trust. Trust is above all about finding compromises, mutually acceptable solutions, and working and acting together. This idea is the main theme of this year’s Forum – Sustaining Confidence in a World Undergoing Transformation.

The world is indeed changing very fast. We are witnessing colossal geopolitical, technological and structural shifts. The unipolar model of a world order failed, and this is clear to everyone today, even to those who still try to operate within the familiar reference system, try to maintain their monopoly, dictate their rules in politics, trade, and finance, and impose their cultural and behavioural standards.

The global economic upheavals of 2008 were a vivid example of the profound crisis in a development model built on unification and domination, or attempts to dominate in any case. This should serve as a serious lesson to make us see and understand the world in all its diversity and make a sober assessment of the new reality and full complexity of relations as they are emerging today.

But instead, we often come up against an unwillingness to listen to new global development leaders, take alternative points of view into account, and not just in word but in essence change the working principles of the key international financial institutions in accordance with the changing situation in the world. Reform of the IMF is at a standstill and the Doha round, which was supposed to set modern new and fair rules for world trade, is practically going nowhere.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an economic forum but there is no avoiding a few words on politics. Politics influences economic processes, and in this respect I note that inability to find compromises, unwillingness to take into account partners’ lawful interests, and blunt use of pressure only add to chaos and instability and create new risks for the international community’s continued development. 

Does anyone gain from disruption to regular cooperation between Russia and the European Union? Does anyone gain from the seeing our joint work on important issues for everyone such as nuclear safety, fighting terrorism, trans-border crime and drug trafficking, and other priority issues come to a standstill? Will this make the world any more stable and predictable? Probably not.

Surely it is clear that in today’s interdependent world economic sanctions used as an instrument of political pressure have a boomerang effect that ultimately has consequences for business and the economy in the countries that impose them.

I understand very well the concerns of foreign businesspeople who have invested billions of dollars in Russia, earned an excellent reputation here and are doing successful business in our country. I understand the representatives of engineering and machine-building companies for which Russian contracts have become a big growth source, or the European tourism industry, which to a large extent has been focusing on Russian consumers.

And now, for the sake of a failing political course, successful businesses have to suffer losses and relinquish to competitors this huge market and the positions they had built up?   

We cannot change the logic of global political and economic development. As I said, the world is multipolar. People want to decide their own futures and preserve their own cultural, historical and civilizational identity.

At the same time, the geo-economic map of the world is changing. New economic growth centres are emerging, new trade and investment routes are forming, new integration organisations are developing and strengthening, and there is greater demand for collective leadership that can draw up common decisions, not imposed by any one party, but decisions reached through consensus and agreement.