Vladimir Putin's opening remarks:
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today we are holding a regular meeting of the Supervisory Board of Vnesheconombank. On our agenda today are several new investment projects and certain fundamental issues, including the creation of efficient mechanisms to achieve our socioeconomic plans. I'm referring to the development plans for the North Caucasus.
In the Strategy for the North Caucasus Federal District we have set ourselves a series of tasks. The most important of them is to help elevate this region. We will have to address transport and energy issues, and improve public services and infrastructure in local communities; and our top priority is to create 400,000 jobs in the next ten years.
To achieve this, a large investment is needed in the North Caucasus - tens and even hundreds of billions of roubles in public and private investments. It is clear that the scale of these tasks demands that only state-of-the-art management systems be used in the regional economy's priority sectors. Today we will look at proposals concerning certain key elements of this system.
I'm speaking about the Development Corporation and the company Resorts of the North Caucasus, which will be set up by Vnesheconombank. In their work, these organisations will rely on the bank's financial and expert capabilities.
The Development Corporation will be responsible for supporting investment projects from the initial idea to the actual implementation. This agency will organise the preparation of all the necessary documents, coordinate them with local, regional and federal authorities and help companies secure loans from financial institutions.
The corporation's most important task will be to train local specialists to work in today's world so that they themselves can later attract investment to the region.
The company Resorts of the North Caucasus will manage the region's integrated tourist complex, which is currently being set up. I'm referring to such resorts as Arkhyz in Karachayevo-Circassia, Lago Naki in Adygea, Mamison in North Ossetia, Matlas in Dagestan and Elbrus in Kabardino-Balkaria.
I would also like to highlight two other issues. The first one is Vnesheconombank's plans to participate in the project to develop and promote Russian technology for the production of supercomputers, which will be in demand in energy, aviation, space exploration, nuclear energy and other industries. The second issue is the creation of a large livestock breeding facility in the Bryansk Region.
We all know that this has been a tough year for agriculture. Many agricultural companies have suffered severe losses due to the drought and need government aid. We have already talked about this today. This aid is being provided.
At the same time, we see that many investors decided not to freeze their development projects and to keep working toward long-term targets, setting up large and technology-intensive facilities, above all in livestock breeding, crop raising and logistics.
We naturally need to support this kind of a focus. We will also discuss a project like this today. I'm referring to the Miratorg company. A large beef cattle production complex is proposed, containing 100,000 head of cattle. We haven't ever had large facilities like this before - I can't even recall any in Soviet times. This facility will be able to produce up to 48,000 tonnes of beef per year.
This project requires over 24 billion roubles, with Vnesheconombank to provide 18.4 billion of them.
Let's get down to work.