Opening address by Vladimir Putin:

Good afternoon,

This is a regular meeting of the Government Commission on Monitoring Foreign Investment, and our agenda, as usual, includes consideration of applications for transactions with Russian strategic assets.

Last year was difficult for both Russia and our foreign partners. We all faced serious problems. This situation, however, didn't stop the inflow of direct foreign investments to Russia, which, as a preliminary evaluation shows, exceeded $40 billion in 2009.

I think on the whole we have successfully managed to cope with the most acute symptoms of the global economic crisis, retaining the key competitive advantages and resuming the growth of GDP.

We must find a way to create the most favourable environment for foreign investments as well as for any other kind of investment in our economy. The post-crisis period will see great competition to attract investments, a competition which has already begun actually.

We therefore need to take additional steps to create an investment-friendly environment. It implies fine-tuning the taxation system to ensure that it encourages innovations by lifting administrative barriers, optimising the state monitoring procedures and developing up-to-date technical regulations.

All these measures should help us create a highly favourable environment for innovations. Our primary goal is to diversify our economy, and to break from mono-economy. In the first place, we will encourage companies, both Russian and foreign, dealing in our priority sectors.

To revitalise the economy after the crisis, we must primarily focus on the development of single-industry communities and high-technology industries.

Let us start our discussion.