The meeting participants considered progress in the implementation of the plan of activities (roadmap) for Creating an International Financial Centre and Improving the Investment Climate in Russia.
Dmitry Medvedev’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
Meeting on the creation of an international financial centre in the Russian Federation
Today’s meeting is devoted to the creation of an international financial centre and the development of financial markets. We have just been discussing in some detail the development of our banking system and now we are making a smooth transition to discussing the IFC.
The work to create the IFC is conducted by a task force in close coordination with professional market participants and experts. I hope we will achieve our goal because we have been working on it for quite some time. We intend to expand as much as possible the opportunities for using financial institutions to attract additional resources for the modernisation of the national economy and bring about structural change in our economy. This is precisely why we are implementing the project to turn Moscow into an international financial centre. The IFC, of course, is not only about financial operations, although this is the most important thing, but also about modernising the city’s infrastructure, without which we won’t be able to achieve anything. This concerns offices and a convenient transport system, the things we have been talking about for a while.
Dmitry Medvedev: “We intend to expand as much as possible the opportunities for using financial institutions to attract additional resources for the modernisation of the national economy and bring about structural change in our economy”.
The organisation of the banking sector has been changing in recent years and the financial industry has been developing. I would like to remind you that last summer the Government adopted a roadmap for the creation of the IFC. The roadmap is called upon to make the Russian financial market more competitive, to form modern instruments, to shape modern banking products, to improve the quality of corporate management and ensure the rights and interests of investors. This action plan has been worked out jointly with the banking and financial community and has been thoroughly assessed by the Government and the Bank of Russia. I hope that this is a plan not only for the bureaucrats, but also for all the market participants.
I would like to dwell on the topic of financial market regulation, which was discussed at an earlier meeting. The single regulator of financial markets created at the Bank of Russia started working on September 1. We all believe that consolidated supervision of all the sectors of the financial market, including the banking sector, will be more efficient and will perform better, although that is a big challenge, and we discussed this topic with you, at least with many of those present when we were making this decision. It was essentially our common decision. This is not to say that the Government seeks to shift the responsibility for the stability of financial markets entirely to the Bank of Russia. We will continue to work on it together, we will naturally monitor the situation, form the legal framework, and this was also discussed today, so we will also talk about it here.
I would like to draw your attention to another topic.
It has to do with the draft federal law on self-regulating organisations in the financial markets sphere. The aim is to lay down effective and transparent rules of the game for investors. As I said, it is impossible to develop the financial market without new technologies and new products. At the same time it is a fairly high-risk area both for investors and for consumers, so the rules of work in this market, the regulations must be constantly improved to meet the current state of the economy, so to speak, and to ensure a reasonable balance of interests between the participants and the regulator. Professional associations can and must play a bigger role in this.
Finally, we are to discuss a package of amendments to the Tax Code and the Law on Securities. They passed the first reading at the State Duma back in 2012. These innovations are system-wide, regulating as they do some issues connected with the taxation of transactions with securities and the financial instruments of term deals. The second reading of the document is scheduled for December.
This is the approximate agenda for the meeting. Of course if something else crops up, don’t hesitate to raise the issues. Let us start our discussion.
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