The 30th meeting of the Consultative Council on foreign investments in Russia took place on October 17, 2016 in Gorki. The result of the meeting of the Council came the proposals for multiple units, including investments in agriculture, processing industry, pharmaceuticals and financial markets.
Advisory Council on foreign investments in Russia was created by the Russian government on 29 September 1994, the Council acts consistently and solves the issues of doing business in Russia and investment in Russian economy. The main tasks of the Council are establishing and maintaining dialogue between the Russian authorities and foreign business. Today the Council consists of the heads of the 54 international companies, including Mitsubishi Corporation, Coca-Cola, Societe Generale Group, Mitsui and Co, PepsiCo and etc.
The Council has determined priority areas that will be developed in 2017. The priorities are: improving the investment attractiveness of the Russian economy, the development of the Far East and Siberia, investment and development of electricity networks, improvement of processing goods for domestic consumption etc.
Following the meeting, Prime Minister instructed to complete several tasks:
- in the field of document management it is needed to explore the possibility of introducing veterinary accompanying documents in electronic form on the goods of the food industry, as well as to address issues of technology implementation, remote authentication and electronic signatures, including in the field of Finance.
- in the pharmaceutical industry – to find out the conditions when the medical drugs produced under special contracts include to products of Russian origin (degree of localization);
- in the social sphere to study the positive experience of foreign companies in the provision of care for people with disabilities;
- in the area of taxes – explore with oil and gas companies the possibility of introducing zero tax rate for production of liquid hydrocarbons;
- in energy – to study the possibility of legislation improvement in the field of renewable energy for improving the organization and conduct of competition of investment projects on construction of new generating facilities, functioning on the basis of solid waste management.
- in the customs-trade to study the question of reducing the electronic components and parts import using to assemble goods for export.
At the 30th meeting of the Council was marked its positive role in improving the business climate in Russia: its activities gave about 160 billion USD as investments in the Russian economy, which allowed to create more than 225’000 jobs. The world’s largest company included in the composition of the Board, actively investing in the Russian economy and establish the production here.
In particular, the Japanese company Mitsui (member of the Council) is actively developing its activities in the far East. The company signed a Memorandum with the Ministry of trade and investment cooperation. In the far East Mitsui, jointly with RusHydro, develops projects of renewable energy sources in isolated zones of the region and geothermal projects in Kamchatka. The first project the partners will increase the capacity of the Mutnovsky GeoPP of 50 to 120 MW. In addition, the company will build solar and wind stations. East economic forum Mitsui, the Japanese Bank JBIC and RusHydro signed a document under which the Japanese company will acquire up to 4.88% of Treasury shares of RusHydro and a fixed intention of companies to participate in joint projects.
