Shareholders of Rosagroleasing, a state company that leases out agricultural equipment, met at the Government House, to elect a new Board and its Chairman.

First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov was elected Chairman of the Board.

Yelena Skrynnik, Rosagroleasing director general was elected to the Board along with five independent directors - Boris Chernyakov, head of the agrarian sector at the Russian Institute of the USA and Canada; Ivan Dunin, Director of the National Institute for Animal Breeding and non-voting member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Andrei Shestopalov, general director of the National Institute of Competitiveness; Alexander Khandruyev, first vice-president of the Association of Regional Banks; and Andrei Shastitko, general director of the Economic Analysis Bureau foundation.

The shareholders also discussed the new Board's operation and augmenting the company's share capital by 4 billion roubles in accordance with the Federal Law on the Federal Budget for 2008 and the Planning Period of 2009 and 2010, thus making it up to 47.3 billion roubles this year.

Rosagroleasing is Russia's largest leasing company for the farming sector, with leasing portfolio of 75 billion roubles.

The Government decided in November 2008 to expand the sphere of application of federal leasing in sectors requiring state support to keep afloat, such as farming equipment engineering, the food industry, forestry, and mechanical engineering companies building road-construction machinery for rural areas.