/ world today news/ At the forum in Davos, the Russian delegation will be led by the Deputy Prime Minister and representative of the President for the Far East Yuriy Trutnev. According to experts, this means that at the World Economic Forum, Russia will focus primarily on the presentation of Asian projects. Moreover, neither the president nor the prime minister will visit Switzerland.
In 2016, the Russian delegation to the World Economic Forum in the Swiss city of Davos will be headed by the Deputy Prime Minister and Plenipotentiary Representative of the President for the Far East Yuriy Trutnev, before that he was responsible for holding the economic forum in Vladivostok. This information of the Russian business newspaper “Vedomosti” was confirmed by the press secretary of the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Natalia Timakova.
According to experts, this decision is evidence that for the Russian delegation in Davos, the main topic will be the turn to the East – a path to increasing Russia’s cooperation with Asian countries, which the country has declared since 2014.
“Russia is ready to demonstrate to investors from Asia its readiness for the joint development of various projects, first of all in the Far East, because this region meets their economic interests,” says Georgy Vashchenko, head of operations at the Russian stock market IC Freedom Finance.
According to his words, projects in the field of energy, oil and gas extraction and aircraft construction will most likely be discussed. In particular, already at the beginning of January 2015, it became known that one of the largest metallurgical corporations in Russia – Nornickel – will sell for $100 million 13.33% of the Bistrina deposit, the largest in Russia in terms of copper reserves . The buyer in the deal is the consortium of Chinese investors Highland Fund.
The main goals
As Nataliya Timakova specified for the Vedomosti newspaper, in Davos Russia will launch the Asia-Pacific agenda and the Far East Economic Forum: these tasks are within the competence of Yuriy Trutnev. Macroeconomics and low oil prices, new trade and investment alliances in Asia, and Russia’s role in the international security system are also planned to be discussed within the Russia overview session. Among the stated participants in the discussion are the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiulina and the former Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, who is considered an ideologue of liberal reforms in Russia.
According to Anatoly Vakulenko, an analyst from the Finam investment holding, Russian proposals will be addressed not only to Chinese investors, because China has enough opportunities to learn about the prospects of Far Eastern projects and invest in them. Therefore, the proposals will be addressed to European and possibly Middle Eastern investors, he adds.
The possibility of cooperation
In 2015, the Russian delegation to the forum was led by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, and before that by Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. The organizers of the forum sent invitations to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, but in recent years they have not participated in the forum. In addition, heads of state and government regularly participate in his work.
In 2009, the Russian delegation to Davos was headed by Vladimir Putin, then Prime Minister, and in 2013, the Russian delegation was headed by Dmitry Medvedev. In the words of Giorgi Vashchenko, the government strongly distanced itself from the forum in Davos, because “in recent times it has been unjustifiably used only as a tribune from which foreign participants from Western countries criticize Russia’s foreign and domestic policy.
By the way, German Chancellor Angela Merkel refused to participate in the forum. In any case, according to Anatoly Vakulenko, “the representatives of the delegation will most likely emphasize that the policy of economic sanctions against Russia has shown its failure, inflicting sufficiently serious losses on the European economy, without forcing Russia to change its political course’.
Who is Yuri Trutnev?
Yuri Trutnev was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Representative of the President for the Far East in 2013. In September 2015, he held the first Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, as a result of which more than 80 major investment contracts worth over 1.3 trillion were concluded rubles ($17.2 billion). Yuri Trutnev previously worked as an aide to the Russian president and for eight years, from 2004 to 2012, headed the Ministry of Natural Resources, which in Russia is also responsible for issuing licenses for the development of oil fields. In 2009 and 2012, he was recognized as the richest member of the government, as he earned 155 million rubles (about $5 million at the then exchange rate) and 210 million rubles ($7 million at the then exchange rate) respectively.
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