As he was opening the meeting, Mr Zubkov said, in part:

"Yesterday, I chaired a meeting of the Organising Committee for the International Year of Forests in Russia. Our country supports the initiative together with other major timber producing states – Brazil, Canada, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the United States. A meeting of the Government Presidium made the relevant decision last December.

The Organising Committee has been formed. We approved its membership yesterday and endorsed a plan for its events and their preparation, which cover 21 topics across the many aspects of forestry and related industries. These include National Tree Planting Day, scheduled for May 14, which will involve Organising Committee members. Other events include the "Protect Forests from Fire" national campaign and related measures designed to explain wildfire danger to the public and instil environmental friendliness. Trade and professional competitions and youth contests such as "Undergrowth" and "Singing Forest" are also worth mentioning.

The regions should draw up and endorse the relevant plans by May 1. These plans will include regional programmes, festivals and competitions parallel to their national counterparts, which focus on environmental friendliness, a rational and conservational public attitude towards forests, and information campaigns on the importance of forests as one of Russia's critical natural resources.

Today we will discuss the implementation of priority investment projects in forestry development and the timber industry. In fact, we will continue the discussions that began in Syktyvkar during a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and at a roundtable in Moscow on the development of the timber industry, in which he also participated last September.

I would like to begin with a few words about fulfilling the prime minister's orders, which should summarise both events.

We have drawn up proposals to abolish redundant procedures and reduce administrative barriers in appointing forest plots for priority investment projects, and in doing so, we hope to expedite the consideration of applications and reduce the number of coordinating bodies [involved in this process].

The package of measures being implemented is intended to facilitate the construction and utilisation of transport, communications and utilities lines. The latest legislative amendments allow for the lease of forest plots in their vicinity. The tax rates and procedures on felling such plots have been streamlined. December's resolutions allow us to widen both new and existing clearings for such lines.

These measures facilitate services in transport, communications and utilities, and promote the rational and economically viable use of such plots. Now the power industry has every condition in place for the normal use of such lines. We need not be reminded of how critical this matter is, but suffice it to recall the emergency in Central Russia late last year and at the beginning of this year.

A unified arrangement has been drafted for regional forest management bodies, and methods have been elaborated for evaluating each region's efficiency with their new duties in forestry affairs.

We need another set of measures to streamline leasing and forestry planning and funding.

I request the speakers at this meeting to report on the sales of timber felled on forest reserve plots and to draft a sub-programme on the use of timber-derived and other biofuels in compliance with the national programme for housing and public utilities reform and modernisation through 2020.

We will pay particular attention to proposals on the partial subsidisation of interest on loans in order to implement priority investment projects. These proposals should be made before the end of June.

All these efforts will promote the attainment of this year's goal to implement nine projects with total investment exceeding 24 billion roubles. Eight such projects, accounting for a total investment of 36 billion roubles, were implemented last year and created more than 3,000 new jobs. We considered three such projects during our videoconference in Syktyvkar.

All told, 95 projects have been planned for today, with total investment exceeding 415 billion roubles. They envisage roughly 40,000 new jobs. The list is still open, however, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade is considering the latest applications.

Today we will also discuss the development of the pulp-and-paper industry. We are implementing twelve priority projects [in the field], with a total investment of over 260 billion roubles. Nine of them envisage the modernisation and reconstruction of available plants, and three call for the construction of new ones.

Their implementation will significantly reduce related imports by 2017. We plan to cut coated paper imports alone by more than 60%, or from 600,000 tonnes to 200,000 tonnes a year.

We have just received information on one of the most ambitious of these projects – the Boguchany timber industrial complex in the Krasnoyarsk Territory – in which 73 billion roubles has been invested. Vnesheconombank is active in the implementation of this project, which is unique both in terms of construction concepts and its future production. It exemplifies our efforts to upgrade timber processing for high-tech commodities.

Work is underway on other priority investment projects in the Komi Republic and the Irkutsk Region.

Essentially, regional administrations and relevant federal executive agencies should closely monitor the implementation of these and other priority investment projects because they envisage not only enhancing the output of finished timber products but also – and even more importantly – the creation of new, well-paid jobs, infrastructure development, upgraded production, and, last but not least, larger tax revenues at every level. These projects hold the promise of major domestic and overseas investment. Foreign investors are involved in the industry even now, as we have seen in Syktyvkar and elsewhere.

Present and tentative investors need the greatest possible encouragement and rules that are clear and explicit to the utmost.

Today's agenda also includes the prospects for a new government information system for keeping tack of timber production and proposed amendments to the federal legislation on improving timber turnover in Russia, including export control. The Federal Forestry Agency has proposed an approach to these goals. We will discuss them now."