Vladimir Putin: Mr Dmitriev, what are the Fund’s performance results for the first six months of the year?
Kirill Dmitriev: Mr President, I would like to thank you for the support you have given the Russian Direct Investment Fund, because without this support, it would have been impossible to achieve the results I want to briefly discuss.
First of all, we have already attracted over $15 billion from the world’s leading investors to mutual funds and essentially built the most powerful partnerships with leading funds throughout the world. We have the greatest number of such partners among sovereign funds.
Second, we have already invested more than $7 billion into Russia’s economy, of which $1.2 billion were investments in RDIF and over $6 billion are investments from our partners.
Thus, Russian to foreign investments ratio was one to five. If we take deals where foreign partners invested and we helped them but did not invest ourselves, that ratio would be one to ten. 90% of all attracted funds came from investors in Asia and the Middle East. There are long-term investors there who want and plan to be Russia’s strong and powerful partners.
We have achieved two yields for investors:one with return of 22% per annum, and the other – 33% per annum; in other words, we demonstrate that investments by the government and by our co-investors are performing well. Russia is demonstrating good returns for investors.
Thanks in part to our work, Russia was in third place last year, as you know, in attracting foreign investments.
Vladimir Putin: The US was in first place, China was in second (with what, 127?) and we have 97.
Kirill Dmitriev: Yes, and this is a jump from eighth place to third in just one year.
What’s important is that investors are still interested – $3.6 trillion investments came to meet in St Petersburg [International Economic Forum] – and investors say that they strongly oppose sanctions, which they see as a very dangerous precedent for their own countries and their own economies.
Vladimir Putin: Indeed.
Kirill Dmitriev: Yes. All long-term investors are against them.
I’ll talk briefly about our investments. For example, we have invested $1 billion in the Russian stock exchange and just two weeks ago, also jointly with investors from nine other nations, we took part in future placement of stock exchange asset, meaning that nine nations invested just recently.
We invested one billion in the Far East last year. This year, we plan to invest two billion there, with a focus on the agricultural sector. We are actively developing investments with China, as you instructed.
During your last visit to China, four new investment projects were announced – in logistics, the tourism sector, mineral production in the Far East, and building a bridge between Russia and China that will become the first bridge between Russia and China. You announced the creation of the Russian-Chinese investment committee and we plan to play a significant role in financing those projects.
Our big initiative right now is investing in outsourcing. We have already invested in several outsourcing companies and feel that if state corporations allocate noncore assets and build more marketable players on that basis, then we would be ready to invest, and so would foreigners. Right now, we are announcing and discussing many highly important projects in this area with Russian Railroads.
Vladimir Putin: Good.
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