President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Trutnev, we have quite a few open issues. There may be even more of them in the Far East than anywhere else in the country. However, in the outgoing year the Far East has demonstrated very good economic development rates that are actually higher than in other regions in terms of both industrial and agricultural production. Let us consider how this was achieved and how to maintain this trend in the future.
Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev: Mr President,
Over the first 9 months of the year, industrial production in the Far East grew by 3 percent, investment – by 5 percent, tax revenue – by 31 percent. This is overall sufficiently stable growth.
The Government of the Russian Federation has done the following over this period: it passed two laws – a law on priority development areas and a law on the free port of Vladivostok. The law on the free allocation of land to the people in the Far East has passed its first reading in the State Duma. Also, in accordance with the instruction from the President of Russia following the annual Presidential Address [to the Federal Assembly], the law to extend free port regulations to other ports in the Far East has been submitted to the Government.
All these laws came into effect this year; we have created 9 priority development areas with 15 production facilities and 84 applications. The total declared investment today stands at 240 billion rubles. Another 6 investment projects are being implemented with state support with about 140 billion rubles worth of declared investment.
The free port of Vladivostok has already become operational with 9 residents already registered; the resolution was already made by the supervisory board. These nine residents account for 70 billion rubles of declared investment.
The Far East Development Fund has begun its work. It has invested 9.5 billion rubles into 6 projects, and it continues selecting projects from a rather large number of applications from those who would like to receive state support.
Overall, we have 36 new investment projects with all types of state support, 3 times more applications – 104, and a total of 541 billion rubles worth of investment declared by all support funds. Proceeding from the fact that we already have 3 times more applications than residents, we expect to triple our result over 2016. We believe that given the state support mechanisms that were developed on your instructions, we would be able to attract to the Far East some 1.5 trillion rubles of investment in the next few years. We will continue working towards this goal.
Vladimir Putin: Fine. Let us discuss each area in detail.
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