OREANDA-NEWS. January 10, 2012. Good afternoon esteemed colleagues. Today we are holding a final meeting of Vnesheconombank’s Supervisory Board in the outgoing year, and I would like first of all to thank the Bank's management and all its employees for their intensive and hard work in the outgoing year.. A great deal has been accomplished almost without fail. The scale of the work is impressive. I very much hope that the Bank will go on operating in a highly professional way..

We face major challenges of modernizing our economy and making it more competitive and innovative. There are many challenges involved in developing territories. Vnesheconombank is actively working in practically all these areas.

I must say that VEB's loan portfolio has increased by almost 40% in the first eleven months of this year as a development institution - not just as a rank and file financial institution.

Moreover, Vnesheconombank is acquiring and has already practically acquired new instruments for achieving the tasks assigned to it. I mean above all the fact that the management company of the Russian Direct Investment Fund has started operating. It has been created quite recently, but the management company has projects worth 180 billion rubles in its loan portfolio. This is no mean achievement.

Esteemed colleagues, despite well-known difficulties and troubling  developments in the world economy, and they are indeed alarming,  some complicated processes are also taking place in advanced market economies and some countries are already in recession, that is, their economies have experienced a contraction in GDP for three consecutive months, and there are gloomy forecasts for some euro-zone countries and the States (things have improved a bit there, but on the whole the problems persist)  I would like to note that the Direct Investment Fund we have set up may be very much needed because there are not many promising and reliable projects  in the world, but we have some. Global investment funds have considerable resources: they are looking for places to spend these resources. As you know, most recently I’ve been at the launch of  the Kyzyl-Kuragino railway.  Here we have an example of such a project: huge deposits, top quality coal and an absolutely reliable sales market. There are not  many such projects in the world, and it is not the only one in Russia. So, I would like you to actively launch such projects and to work more energetically with our partners in the Investment Fund. Step up your efforts! I am sure that  we won’t  even  have  to use our reserves and budget resources. Why should we if those who have the money are looking for projects to invest in and we have them? All we need is to work more actively in this direction.

The North Caucasus Development Corporation, set up under your Bank's auspices, has started operating. The Russian Export Credit and Investment Insurance Agency also faces major tasks. We expect the Agency to take energetic steps to support our enterprises, above all of course, those in high-tech sectors. That is what it was created for. Oil and gas workers and metallurgists have their niches in world markets. We need to support high-tech exports.

I would like to stress once again that the tasks aimed at creating points of growth and supporting innovations are linked to supporting exports. I expect VEB’s team to go on working efficiently and consistently.

Now I’d like to say a few words about the current agenda. I see here some interesting projects that stand out not only in terms of their scale, but are in my opinion potentially very useful for improving our economy. The first of these is the project to develop the potassium and manganese salt deposits and to build a mining and concentration plant in the Perm Territory. Why did it catch my attention? Not only because VEB is committed to investing heavily in it (more than 40 billion rubles), but because it is a step that should eventually lead to demonopolization of that sector of our economy. Demonopolization is very important. This is not to say that we should eliminate someone, on the contrary, when a competitive environment is created, the situation improves and prices for a needed and important agricultural product are stabilize, the export potential increases, and in this case VEB does not only enter the capital worth 6.7 billion rubles, but also extends  a 33 billion ruble credit. That is a huge amount. The capacity of the mining and concentration plant will be about 2 million tones of potassium chloride, of which 600,000 tonnes should be sold on the domestic market. I am sure it will give an extra boost to our agro-industrial complex.

Second, a 25 billion-ruble credit line is to be opened for the construction of the middle segment of the Western High-Speed Diameter motorway in St Petersburg. It is a very important project for the northwest of our country, not only for the city of five million but for the entire northwest. There’s no doubt, it will mark a step forward in developing our infrastructure and in giving a second wind to this part of our country, giving it a new character that is in line with European standards, and it will free this city of five million people from an excessive number of heavy vehicles, many of which still pass through central parts of the city even after the ring road around Petersburg was built. The Western High-Speed Diameter is very important for the city.

I was in Petersburg on December 23 attending the ceremony of signing relevant documents. I would like to thank all those who worked actively in order to draw one more line and create necessary conditions for the work to start.

Finally, a 2.5 billion-ruble credit is to be extended for the "Film Club: Culture, Education, Communications" project involving the creation of a cluster of such clubs within the KinoCity project. At least 250 multimedia cinemas are to be built, above all in small and medium-sized towns. This kind of social infrastructure is in short supply in our small and medium-sized towns, and we should do our best to launch it. We have discussed it more than once. I know some agencies have their own ideas on that score, but I would like to stress that we must support this kind of projects. Such clubs are unevenly distributed throughout our country and they need to be supported. The situation is more or less normal in cities with a population of over a million, while in small and medium-sized cities the number of such clubs is diminishing. They must be supported.