Dear colleagues and friends! Allow me to cordially congratulate you on the Ministry of Finance's 210th anniversary, and to wish you a happy Financial Workers Day. Two-hundred and ten years is a long time. Your ministry, which Alexander I founded alongside several other ministries, has played a major role in the development of Russia's financial institutions, and, of course, in the development of our economy.
Russia will always remember the financial reformers of those days, such as Mikhail Speransky, Yegor Kankrin and Sergei Witte. They are a part of Russia’s history.
Yegor Kankrin once famously said: “The protection of finances is all about protecting the lifeblood of the nation.” Today, the Ministry of Finance and all of our financial institutions and agencies are working to resolve these challenges in a broad sense of the word.
These issues have had to be addressed during a relatively quiet period, when we were creating the stabilisation fund and modern institutions, and during turbulent times in the crisis, which our economy has admittedly withstood unscathed. Much of the credit for this accomplishment goes to you. I would like to thank all of the financial-sector workers for making this happen.
We still face many problems. The situation is not easy, and we are all aware of this fact. Managing finances is a process that requires all of us to improve on a daily basis, and to be devoted to Russia's interests in the truest sense of the word. There are professions whose importance is frequently overlooked and even criticised. Finances is one such profession, as people want everything now and they want more of it, while the task of financial-sector workers is to keep things real and to draw a line between what we can do effectively and what we need or want. When these things are in balance, the country does well, and I hope that the situation in Russia is precisely like that today.
We will continue to improve our financial system. The highly skilled professionals who work in the financial sphere will, of course, be in high demand. We still have much to do.
I would like to sincerely wish you a happy holiday once again. I wish you all, your families and friends, good health, success and prosperity in the broadest sense of the word, not just financial.
My best wishes to you all.