President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues,
Finally, despite the awful weather, we have boarded the boat, but we will not be sailing anywhere. I think we will have a talk about life instead. I just want to say a few words.
First of all, I want to welcome you all and thank you all for coming to the St Petersburg Forum. This year, the situation is very particular, of course, and so you are all very busy. There is not a single sector, not a single area of business that is not facing problems at the moment. We are therefore very happy that you have come to St Petersburg to discuss possible ways out of the crisis, our economy’s development prospects, and to talk about global trends and investment development. I want to thank you for this.
As for the situation in general, we spent the whole day discussing it yesterday. Obviously, no one is happy with the situation, despite the emerging positive signs that were also discussed yesterday. But I think we still have a long way to go before fully emerging from the crisis. Perhaps even more important is the lessons that we learn from it. There are macroeconomic lessons to be learned, and they are perhaps the most obvious, since we have all realised just how interdependent we are today. We have all seen how fast the crisis spread. It is enough for one big country to succumb for it to spread to all the others. Just as important are the practical lessons – the measures we need to take to improve our regulation system and ensure that such problems do not arise in the future. This is what we are working on now, what different countries’ leadership is working on, as I discussed yesterday at the plenary session.
I think that in terms of historic lessons, what happened is unprecedented in nature. The G20 summits in Washington and London have shown the main thing – we can work together towards common goals, despite the differences that exist between our economic systems. I think that this is especially important.
We have been working actively on resolving the problems in our economy. We have been quite successful in some areas, and less successful in others. I think we need to be up front about this. Nevertheless, we have invested an unprecedented amount of money – around 12% of our GDP – in supporting the economy, overcoming the crisis, maintaining liquidity, supporting the banking sector and the manufacturing and industrial sectors. Of course, it is very important that this money be properly spent. We will pursue this work we have started and try to keep moving ahead.
Despite the crisis, we are still meeting and discussing specific projects, and this is also extremely important. Investment activity has quietened down of course, but it has not died, and this is good to see. After all, the crisis will come to an end, and if we do not lay the foundations for future work together now we will end up starting from scratch in the post-crisis period and simply losing time, not to mention that we need to prepare too for whatever the next bout of problems the cyclical nature of the global economy will inevitably bring our way sooner or later.
I therefore want to thank you for maintaining your investment interest in Russia, for the proposals that you bring to us, and for the joint projects, those that have already been carried out, and those that I hope we will carry out in the future, despite the difficult period we are going through in our common development.
Thinking back over the history of the twentieth century, I tried to recall examples of when human civilisation has united so resolutely in the face of common problems. The closest example I could think of was when we united to defeat the enemy in World War II. Of course, wars and economic crises are very different things, but never has world civilisation, never has humanity worked together in such close coordination as when united in the common struggle against an open and clear enemy. This shows that we are firmly resolved to overcome this crisis, and this is cause for optimism.
I want to end on this note. I hope to hear from you about the state of affairs in your companies, about what you have been doing, and perhaps we will be able to exchange our impressions afterward.
Thank you.
***
Unfortunately, we still have a rather unwieldy set of procedures [in the tax system]. This is the case not just in Russia, but it is true that the system here does involve a lot of paperwork indeed. Furthermore, electronic document processing is still in the early stages of development here. We really must do everything we can to reduce the amount of paperwork in this area, simplify procedures. This is obvious. I hope that the problems we face today in the area of international accounting and reporting will be settled and everything will be brought into line with the demands of the world today. It is no secret after all, that people have cited shortcomings in the international audit, accounting and financial reporting systems as one of the causes of the crisis. People have pointed out the incompatibilities that often arise between the Anglo-Saxon and continental systems, and so this is an area we need to work on. We also have our own purely Russian problems. We are aware of them, and we will try to improve our system, simplify our taxation procedures and reduce the amount of paperwork involved.
***
We are very impressed with the way Finland, in a relatively short space of time, has developed technology, new technology, IT – developed innovation. We have a great interest in expanding our cooperation in this area, and this is something I discussed yesterday with the President of Finland, Ms Halonen.
As for our problems, we have an immense amount of work to do. Unfortunately, we have not managed to make the transition to an innovation-based economic development model. This is why I set up a presidential commission in this area to give impetus to this process and help us make headway. This is especially important during the crisis period because we will perhaps never have such a good opportunity again to set our economy on a new track of innovation and modernise our technology, despite the difficulties the crisis creates. We therefore need to make use of this situation and give our innovative development the solid foundation it needs. In this context we are interested, of course, in cooperation with Nokia.
***
I believe that economic globalisation is an irreversible trend. I think there should be no doubt in our minds that the global economy will follow this road and not some other. This road is not without its problems, but there is no turning from it now. The crisis has given a dramatic illustration of just how far globalisation has gone and how much our economies have become interdependent.
Regarding developing markets, I think that these markets’ shortcomings and advantages lie in the fact that they are by nature more complex, volatile and dependent, but at the same, they have the potential to recover from this situation more rapidly because different rules and patterns are at work there. I therefore hope that Russia’s economy, which is also a fast-growing market, will overcome its problems a bit more rapidly than we think today. But we can achieve this, of course, only by working together. We hope very much that you will continue your work and investment here, and we will be very happy to see this happen.
Thank you.