President Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, Sergei Yevgenyevich [Naryshkin],
Export support measures, above all for goods produced by the machine-building and high-technology sectors, are one of the means any country, including Russia, can use to diversify its economy. What are the Government’s plans in this area? We have already spoken a lot about the need to take the appropriate measures in this area.
Sergei Naryshkin: Export support for Russian-made goods is one of my main areas of responsibility as deputy prime minister.
The most industrialised countries have indeed put in place specialised mechanisms, functioning mechanisms, to provide support for the export of their goods, above all in the high-technology and machine-building sectors.
Russia has so far not yet established this kind of streamlined system of effective measures, but in accordance with your instruction, we have drawn up such a system of export support measures. A new institution, the Development Bank, will be established as part of this system and will play a key part in its implementation.
The Government has already drawn up a draft law on creating the Development Bank and has submitted it to the State Duma, where it has already been passed in its first reading. I think that the draft law will complete its passage through the Duma and be adopted within the next two months, and the bank will be able to start work in accordance with the new law in the second half of this year.
The budget allocates a sum equivalent to $3.5 billion for export support measures in 2007. Half of this money will fund the production and delivery of industrial goods and military goods as payment for former Soviet debts. Another part of the money will be put into tied loans and state guarantees for major projects carried out by Russian companies, above all energy-sector companies, principally in China and India. Around $1 billion is being allocated to state guarantees for the implementation of Russian companies’ investment projects abroad.
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