Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov on the approved Government strategy for developing Russia’s financial markets over the period 2006–2008:
As things stand today, although the Russian financial market is developing quite rapidly and the stock market indexes are growing, Russian companies, unfortunately, do not view the financial market’s institutions as the primary mechanism for raising capital. At the moment, Russian companies’ main sources of investment are above all their own funds or money raised through loans or initial public offerings placed on financial markets abroad. Unfortunately, a sizeable number of deals involving Russian assets are conducted on bigger foreign trading floors such as London and New York, and not on Russian stock markets. The majority of Russian stocks in free circulation are also being traded abroad. The strategy approved by the Government seeks, of course, to reverse this flow and make the Russian stock market the main source of investment for Russian companies.
How do we intend to do this? The main measures are, firstly, creating competitive financial market institutions in Russia. This means we need to completely overhaul our accounts and settlements system. The strategy sets out concrete measures in this area. We need to introduce new technology to our financial market and make our exchanges and trading floors more competitive, including by creating new exchanges, an oil exchange, for example. We need to introduce risk management systems for professional market players – this is also very important, and we need to develop our individual-account pension systems and collective investment institutions. Of course, it is also very important to lower the entry barriers so that Russian companies can enter the capital market here in Russia. This requires us also to develop a market in derivative financial instruments, which, unfortunately, are still not being used in Russia, and to develop the securitisation of financial assets on the mortgage securities market.
We hope that by implementing the measures I have just listed, by 2009 the Russian stock market’s capitalisation will reach 70 percent of the country’s GDP, and that the share of operations involving Russian shares on Russian trading floors will be at least 70 percent in 2008. We hope that in 2008, at least 20 percent of the fixed capital investment in large and medium Russian companies will be raised through companies placing their bonds and shares on the domestic financial market. If we add to this loans and borrowing made through Russian banks and on the international market, this figure should reach 35–40 percent.
Overall, we think that implementing this strategy will enable us to considerably increase the sources of investment for developing the Russian economy.
Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov on the upcoming session of the Marine Collegium in St Petersburg:
Tomorrow in St Petersburg we will hold a session of the Government Marine Collegium. The first item on the agenda will be improving the procedures for the development and functioning of sea and river ports and their crossing points. To put it frankly, the situation is far from ideal with regard to port infrastructure and the international crossing points that are a part of them. The transport minister [Igor Levitin] will be presenting the main report on this issue and will propose a number of effective measures to bring order to our ports and at the same time develop them as major freight throughput centres, as our foreign trade is growing all the time and the throughput capacity of many of our ports does not meet today’s demands.