President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Dmitriev, the RDIF was established as Russia’s sovereign wealth fund 10 years ago. Since then, the Fund has done a great deal, has come a long way and has attracted considerable funds to the national economy. You have established partner ties with many sovereign funds around the world, as well as with private funds. You have recently been doing a great deal to promote the Sputnik V vaccine abroad, and you can report good results.
Let us talk about all these issues in detail, one after another, and also about your plans for the future.
Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev: Mr President, thank you very much.
First of all, I would like to present a book published for our 10th anniversary, which describes over one hundred of the Fund’s projects, and to thank you for supporting the Russian Direct Investment Fund and for meeting with our partners regularly. It is thanks to your support that we can make large investments in the key economic sectors.
Over the past period, we have invested over 2 trillion rubles together with our partners, who invested 9 rubles per 1 ruble of the Fund’s investment. We have attracted US$40 billion to joint funds, out of which US$4 billion have been provided by the automatic investors, who are investing their money together with us. We have also created 100,000 jobs in Russia. Consequently, our profitability is higher compared to many other indices. The Fund is working well, thanks to your support.
We are focused on six main sectors, where you have instructed us to invest.
First, we invest in improving the quality of life. A relevant example is the Mother and Child clinic, which has increased the number of regions where it is working from 3 to 25, opened 40 new medical centres and created over 7,000 jobs. As many as 40,000 babies have been born there over the past decade.
Second, we are improving infrastructure, for example, a railway bridge between Russia and China, the first railway bridge, which has shortened the route by 700 kilometres and increased the throughput capacity by 54 percent. Another major infrastructure project is, of course, the Central Ring Road.
Speaking of import substitution, we increased the capacity of the liquefied petroleum gas terminal in Ust-Luga by 30 percent.
Turning to the development of the Russian regions, there is the issue of the digital divide. Together with Rostelecom, we provided internet access to 3.5 million Russians.
To conclude, I would like to mention efforts to improve the efficiency of Russian companies. In this regard, we built PLT, a logistics company, from the ground up, and it is now one of the top three logistics companies in Russia.
As for technological development, there was also a lot of investment here, for example in Doctis, a leading telemedicine provider.
Therefore, we have been proactive on all six fronts as per your instructions and created companies that work to Russia’s benefit.
In addition, many of our partners have never invested in Russia before but have now turned into major investors. Saudi Arabia has already invested in 40 projects with us, the United Arab Emirates invested in 65 projects, and China in 40 projects. Once again, it is thanks to your support that many of our investors have proactively co-invested in these projects.
Vladimir Putin: What about Sputnik?
Kirill Dmitriev: We have gone to great lengths to promote Sputnik. The data on its effectiveness indicates that this is the best vaccine in the world. Hungary has recently published data showing Sputnik is ahead of all other vaccines in terms of preventing COVID-19 deaths. People vaccinated with Sputnik are 130 times better protected against death from COVID than the unvaccinated and several times better than people with other vaccines.
It is also important that Sputnik, including Sputnik Light, are effective boosters and offer increased protection, including in the case of the American mRNA vaccines, which remain effective for only a short period. Most importantly, according to the latest data, Sputnik is quite effective against the Omicron variant, and the reduction in vaccine effectiveness is much lower compared to foreign vaccines, while Sputnik Light greatly enhances protection. For these reasons, we believe that Sputnik is the most effective vaccine in the world for fighting the Omicron variant.
Vladimir Putin: Good.
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