Vladimir Putin's opening remarks:
Colleagues, today we will discuss the issues related to replenishing and using the Investment Fund, and we will also review the results of this so far.
It is worth mentioning that the fund was established in 2005 as a tool for the cooperation between the state and the private sector and was meant to facilitate the participation of private businesses in large-scale projects, primarily in projects pertaining to developing infrastructure.
The Investment Fund was created to help consolidate federal, regional and private business resources and combine them in order to assist the country's modernisation.
The fund is currently involved in 14 projects totalling over 1 trillion roubles, with 364 billion roubles invested by the fund.
As of April, 2010, the costs of works completed under federal projects exceeded 265 billion roubles, 60 billion roubles of which were spent by the Investment Fund.
Another important area of the fund's activity was supporting regional investment projects. The government has approved 23 projects in 21 of Russia's regions so far. These projects total about 104 billion roubles and the Investment Fund has contributed 13.3 billion to them.
So, every rouble from the state budget invested in federal projects brought in an average of over three roubles of private investments. And, every rouble spent on regional projects attracted four roubles of private investments.
Funding from the budget in fact becomes a catalyst for private investment. That is the logic we should be guided by.
Naturally, the financial crisis aggravated financing problems of all investment programmes, and the Investment Fund was no exception.
A number of construction and business initiatives had to be postponed and the financing of some projects simply had to be cut.
However, I would like to emphasise that the Investment Fund's methods proved their efficiency in a challenging economic situation.
In this regard, I want to stress that all the projects that were launched with the assistance of the Investment Fund and that are properly financed by private businesses will be carried out. The government will carry out its obligations.
At the same time, we need to make a complete inventory of the fund. We need to reassess the feasibility of proposed projects and estimate what impact they will have on social and economic development of various regions and industries.
Yesterday I signed a statement on controlling and monitoring the execution of projects financed by the Investment Fund. The Regional Development Ministry is responsible for carrying this out.
Let us begin our work.