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On June 18, the Council for International Economic Activity of the Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly held a “brainstorm” of the Central Federal District regions and the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia.
The main issue of the online meeting was the problem of attracting investments to the regions and possible ways to solve it.
Representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development spoke about the current state of the investment climate in Russia and existing measures to support it.
“According to the Bank of Russia, 2019 was a positive year for the development of Russia's investment potential. We managed to stabilize the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI): in 2019, 3.5 times more FDI was received compared to 2018,” - said acting Deputy Director of the Investment Policy Department of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia Guzel Baskakova.
Despite the positive indicators of 2019, the situation in the economy in 2020 has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation remains extremely uncertain in the world. An indicator of this uncertainty is the wide range of international organizations' estimates of global growth: for this year - a drop of two to five percent, for the next year - an increase of three to 7.5 percent. UNCTAD believes that the coronavirus pandemic will decline global FDI by 30 to 40 per cent in 2020 and 2021.
Now it is necessary to activate investment activity as one of the key factors of economic growth of the country and its regions.
Guzel Baskakova addressed the representatives of the Russian Federation regions: “Today we can discuss and develop effective measures to improve the investment climate in Russia.”
Deputy Prime Minister of the Ryazan region Ilya Veselov said: “Regions should not consider each other competitors in the fight for investors; we all work together for the benefit of our state. I suggest informing each other about the entrepreneurial opportunities of neighboring regions and “sharing” business.”
At the same time, Deputy Head of the Smolensk region Representative office in Moscow Murad Rasulov drew attention to the fact that it is also important to take into account the opinions of regional business representatives when preparing measures to improve the investment climate, as they are one of the key experts in this issue.
The issue of increasing the investment attractiveness of Crimea and increasing the presence of businesses on its territory, including Russian ones, is one of the main tasks of this region. Investors are afraid of the risks of being under sanctions, so the investment attractiveness of the region is not obvious to many companies. Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea, Georgy Muradov, called for measures to be taken and to organize the presence of strategic organizations of the Russian economy in Crimea as a priority in order to provide for themselves. “Crimea doesn't like being a cargo!” - explained the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Crimea.
As a result, the participants of the conference, including the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, expressed gratitude to the Council for International Economic Activities of the Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly for organizing this event and noted the importance of such meetings between regional and Federal authorities; that can be a platform to conduct a constructive dialogue and jointly eliminate all obstacles to the formation of favorable conditions for Russian business and investment attractiveness.