Opening remarks by Dmitry Medvedev:

It seems like just yesterday we were sitting in this hall and having a talk, dear colleagues. A year has passed, and once again we are meeting with representatives of Russian business circles as part of our Sochi Forum. This is really a good opportunity to talk, a good opportunity for you to tell the Government directly what is hindering you in your work and who personally is hindering your work, and for the Government to make certain decisions and to adjust certain decisions. 

Just recently, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs held a congress at which the President spoke. There were a lot of interesting proposals from representatives of business and all kinds of stories from everyday life. I hope that our meeting will be productive in this respect. 

We are obviously all in a situation involving a dynamically changing world and global economy. Russia is being influenced by a number of objective and subjective factors in its development, including the decisions of a number of foreign states. But this has not prevented us from developing. As a result of all the changes that are taking place, we have set priorities for ourselves and we are trying to achieve these priorities. We are trying to improve the country’s competitiveness – there was a speech about this today during the panel discussion as well. We are trying to work with exports in order to spur economic growth. As a result of the agreements we have reached, including with some of you, the Russian Export Center has started working, as have measures to support exports. According to expert estimates, non-energy and non-primary exports, which are particularly valuable for us, grew by roughly 20% in 2017 alone and reached a figure of approximately USD 130 billion, which just recently would have been difficult to even fathom. 

We have a programme to compensate interest rates on export loans, an opportunity has arisen to reduce transportation costs, and intellectual property is receiving special attention. And a number of other decisions were adopted. 

It is clear that no one is waiting for us anywhere with open arms. On the contrary, they are trying to squeeze us out of the markets. Many markets are occupied by suppliers from other countries. So export support should probably be expanded. This applies not only to large businesses, but to small and medium-sized businesses as well. I'm sure that big business could help a smaller business in this sense.

Recently, a special expert examination was conducted with the Government’s assistance and a number of strategic sessions were held to determine goals in matters concerning export growth. Interesting proposals were made, including with respect to industrial exports and agrarian exports. Let’s discuss this issue today as well, especially since we just recently adopted very important decisions at the level of the Council of the Heads of the Member States of the Eurasian Economic Union. As you know, we reached an agreement with our colleagues to switch to traceability in almost all product groups. This means that our Russian business and, of course, the Russian authorities will be able to see the movement of various commodities not only across our country, but also in the markets of five states, which is very important given the various problems associated with the import to our country of poor quality goods or in violation of rules of competition – at dumping prices or simply counterfeit, smuggled goods. I hope that we can also sort things out in this regard.

You all know the economic indicators. I drew attention to this once again at the plenary session – they aren’t bad at the moment. If you compare them with some other periods, they might even be the best in our entire history despite the external constraints. We need to take advantage of this. 

We have launched various pilot projects in a number of areas. Some of you are probably working with them in certain regions. 

I specifically invited our colleagues in the Government to our meeting. If you have certain questions of a very specific nature, please don’t only address them to me, but also to my colleagues in the Government who specifically came for this purpose. 

Let's discuss different issues. I have cited several of them. I think that these are rather important areas of our joint work.

Source: http://government.ru/news/31393/