Ekaterinburg became a host city for a series of important top profile political and economic events last week. Dmitry Medvedev and Angela Merkel held interstate negotiations and talks with the commercial companies resulting in Siemens AG agreement to participate in Skolkovo. Additionally, two exhibitions, Innoprom-2010 and Russian Defense Expo-2010 took place in the region. Find details in the weekly report by FederalPress.
Ekaterinburg became a host city for a series of important top profile political and economic events last week. Dmitry Medvedev and Angela Merkel held interstate negotiations and talks with the commercial companies resulting in Siemens AG agreement to participate in Skolkovo. Additionally, two exhibitions, Innoprom-2010 and Russian Defense Expo-2010 took place in the region. Find details in the weekly report by FederalPress.
Angela Merkel’s visit
Last week Ekaterinburg became a meeting place for the President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. Heads of the states participated in Petersburg’s Dialogue Forum and then conducted interstate consultations.
Delegations of the Russian and German businessmen signed strategic agreements in the presence of Dmitry Medvedev and Angela Merkel. The most significant one has been signed between Siemens AG and Russian railway companies. Siemens will participate in Skolkovo Project and will create a joint enterprise to produce electric trains. Thus, Siemens will bring a new portion of modern technologies to Russia.
In an interview with FederalPress, political scientist Mikhail Korobelnikov identified a rising demand of German businessmen who work in Russia. Their suggestion is to cancel visas at all or to considerably ease the procedure. This has been the first time when the German side initiated visa regime talks to avoid bureaucracy tying the relationships between two countries.
Holding Petersburg’s Dialogue Forum in the center of the Urals has been important to strengthening connections on both federal and regional levels. Germany is one of the long-term economic partners of Sverdlovsk Region.
Initiation of innovations in the Urals
The International Ural Exhibition and Forum of Industry and Innovations "INNOPROM - 2010" was held in Ekaterinburg on July 15th through July 19th. President’s Assistant Arkady Dvorkovich and Vice Prime Minister Igor Sechin became top-profile visitors of the exhibition together with Plenipotentiary Nikolai Vinnichenko and Governor Alexander Misharin.
During the Forum a number of large commercial enterprises and Sverdlovsk Region government stroke a series of important deals.
Viktoria Panova, political scientist, says, “Innoprom-2010 has launched the process of major change of image of Sverdlovsk Region to become a center of production and innovations”. Over 500 companies participated with 6000 registered guests from 30 countries.
“The Forum itself became one of the leading economic events of the country. Under its framework two plenary meetings, over 70 presentations and round table discussion were held. Talks about innovations and demonstrations of the cutting edge technology were united on one ground”, Viktoria Panova observes.
Russian Defense Expo-2010
Another large event of the federal scale took place in Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region. The Sixth International Exhibition Russian Defense Expo -2010 was opened by the Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia Viktor Khristenko on July 14th.
Participants came from Germany, France, Ukraine and Belarus. But the Russian defense complex was undeniably the major player.
Apart from military exhibits much of the exposition was devoted to civil production of the defense industry. Minister Viktor Khristenko was shown titanium shovels produced by the Corporation VSMPO-Avisma and mobile units to drill wells manufactured by UralVagonZavod JSC. Ural Optical and Mechanical Plant held talks with businessmen from France about exporting laser technologies with applications in medicine.
“Russian Defense Expo-2010 is a traditional event in Sverdlovsk Region. It should be marked that it presents high interest both in Russia and abroad. This year over 2200 exhibits of various machines and other products have been demonstrated”, reports Konstantin Ustinov, deputy director of the department of internal policy of the Governor’s Office.
To keep leading positions in the exhibition market, Russian Defense Expo in Nizhny Tagil might become a part of Innoprom Exhibition and include more innovative products and technologies in the future years.
Investments in SIBUR
Dmitry Konov, president of SIBUR, one of the leading petrochemical companies in Russia and Eastern Europe, and Vladimir Dmitriev, chairman of VneshEconomBank, signed financial agreement for the project called Tobolsk-Polymer on July 14th in Tobolsk, Tyumen Region.
VEB has raised funds from Europe in the amount of 1.5 billion USD. Now the polymer project in Tobolsk is truly international. European banks provide credit lines guaranteed by European insurance companies while German and Italian companies headed by American specialists build a polypropylene production complex located in Tobolsk.
“Taking into account the practice of start-up project financing and the ratio of rubles and currency loans in the Russian market, I can assume that this loan in dollars will cost SIBUR and VEB about 7-7.5 percent of annual interest rate”, Alexander Kabakov of Finam Education Center reckons.
United Russia in Surgut
Vice-mayor of Surgut Roman Markov was the leading United Russia candidate in the elections of mayors. He won the party’s primaries, but the results were cancelled. Now Roman Markov plans to participate in the elections as an independent candidate.
“Apart from United Russia members, there are many people living and working in Surgut who belong to other parties or do not belong to any parties at all. We need to think about our citizens in the first place”, he declared.
Local insurance market
Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Mikhail Yurevich met with Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin to report about dry spell recovery measures in the region. He asked Prime Minister to provide a new governmental loan of 4 billion rubles to cover economic losses and to prolong old loans.
As a result, governmental aid will be provided to those farms which have proper insurances for the loss of yield due to dry weather. Others are recommended to insure their yield in the next season.
Chelyabinsk Region takes the last position in the Russia’s list of harvest insurances, director of Chelyabinsk Branch of OSAO Ingosstrakh Andrey Samoilov says.
The amount of premiums to insurance companies in Chelyabinsk Region accounted a little over 8 million rubles in 2009. Whereas in Novosibirsk Region the premium amount reaches 516 million rubles.