RTR-Vesti
March 10, 2005

Vladimir Putin's Meeting with German Gref

Anchor: German Gref reported to the president that the country's program of economic development would be presented to the government in March. The new program takes into account the results of a recent survey among foreign investors. The survey shows that the majority of investors consider Russia to be attractive for investments, although there are a number of barriers to investing here. Vitaly Trubetskoy has more details.

Correspondent: German Gref had a lot of things with him, including the results of the survey conducted in March in cooperation with the Foreign Investment Advisory Council. One hundred and fifty-eight major companies operating in Russia took part in the survey. They were asked about the results of their work and their plans for the future. The outcome of the survey is encouraging. Eighty percent of investors have been successful in realizing their business plans over the last two years, 17 percent of the participants consider their results intermediate, and only 3 percent consider them poor. Seventy-eight percent of the surveyed companies plan on expanding their business, and 46 percent plan to increase their investments in Russia. Investors also named a number of problems they face in Russia, corruption being the major one. It is followed by administrative barriers, so called selective law enforcement, contradictory legislation and conflicts between government and business. In general, survey participants consider Russia a good place for investing.

German Gref (Minister of Economic Development and Trade): According to the survey, the five main advantages of investing in Russia are the size of the market (88 percent), a stable economic growth rate (77 percent), the high quality and low cost of the workforce (55 percent) and macroeconomic and political stability (46 percent).

Correspondent: The ministry compares this year's survey results with the results of the last survey conducted four years ago.

German Gref: Previously security issues, differing law enforcement in Russian Federation divisions and actual regionalization of legislation were among the major problems. The problem of high tax rates is not among the first ten named in this year's survey either.

Correspondent: President Putin listened to the report and asked how the results of the analysis would be used. German Gref said that by the end of the month his ministry would draft and present to the government a medium-term economic development program. The program will include concrete measures aimed at eliminating administrative barriers as well as recommendations for unambiguous and effective interpretation of legal regulations.

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