On the development of the Far East; on the first East Economic Forum.
Excerpts from the transcript:
Meeting with deputy prime ministers
Dmitry Medvedev: The Far East is one of our top government priorities. We have made decisions to establish new enterprises and infrastructure there and have pinned great hopes on the priority development areas. I signed a resolution on the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East: now they can control the process of developing these areas because they are being set up in line with the Government’s resolution, while the ministry is in charge of all organisational efforts and monitoring. In addition, I signed a directive endorsing a list of investment projects in the Far East, all of which will receive government support. The list includes several enterprises on mining and processing gold in the Kamchatka Territory and the Amur Region, ore mining and processing enterprise in Yakutia, as well as a complex for handling coal in the Khabarovsk Territory, to name a few.
We have planned several events for this year, including the First East Forum.
Yury Trutnev, Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District
Yury Trutnev: The commission on investment projects (the Government Commission on the Socio-Economic Development of the Far East) will be in charge of six projects with total private investment of 127 billion roubles. Investors have already put in 52 billion roubles, or 40 percent of the total. The Government plans to invest 16.8 billion roubles in these projects. Their implementation will produce 89.5 billion roubles in taxes by 2025, so the government investment will pay off five times during this period.
Today we have 11 investment projects that have been carried out to a large degree. I’m referring to projects on mining and metallurgy, livestock breeding, development of the transport and logistics infrastructure, fisheries, agriculture, the chemical industry and construction in practically all districts of the Far East. At the same time we are establishing priority development areas. The commission has already selected three of them (two in the Khabarovsk Territory and one more in the Primorye Territory) and have submitted them for your consideration. Another seven territories will be reviewed in the near future. We hope to do this in April.
We see up to 20 priority development areas that are ready to be completed this year. We also have about 40 projects. Their implementation will depend, among other things, on budget allocations.
As for the East Forum, our neighbours are seriously interested in it, primarily in the new forms of work I’ve mentioned today. They want to take part in all of this.
We must adopt a law on the free port of Vladivostok, continue working on priority development areas and investment projects, launch the Fund for the Development of the Far East and prepare several additional instruments that will step up investment activities in the Far East.
