Discours et allocutions de l`Ambassadeur

Dear Chairman,

Dear club members,

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

 

First of all I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the organisers for inviting me to take part in the meeting of the Swiss businessmen society Club zum Rennweg – a renowned think-tank that unites unbiased professionals.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to share my ideas about the current situation and the future perspective of the Russian economy, Swiss-Russian relations, particularly bilateral trade cooperation, as well as touch upon the topic of Russia-EU ties.

Today business circles and business diplomacy play a special role in maintaining trust and mutual understanding between our countries and people.
We highly appreciate the resolve of our Swiss partners to develop normal business ties with Russia and its regions.

Russia is ready for dialog with everybody who is interested in doing so. This concerns economic, trade, investment, banking and any other spheres. We are open for cooperation with those who are willing to work honestly, who respect our values and traditions and who are ready to uphold the balance of interests.

Now a few words about Russian economy.

Russia is a rapidly developing high-capacity market with population of 147 million people. Its conditions are improving every year. According to the Federal State Statistics Service, Russia’s GDP grew by 2,3 % last year. Among major branches of economy that showed the highest growth in 2018 are mining, finance and insurance, hotel business and public catering.

In recent years Russia has been steadily gaining positions in report of the World Economic Forum on global competitiveness and in 2018 ranked 43^rd
(in 2012 it was rated 67^th), and in the Doing Business 2018 index of the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation Russia climbed to the 31^st position (in 2010 it was 124^th). Our goal in the near-term outlook is to move up to the 20^th position or even higher. Russia is also among top 15 countries with the highest budget transparency.

Serious work continues on improving the investment climate in the country – on the regional as well as federal levels. The government is taking measures to create more favourable conditions for business community. Russian regions, in their turn, are competing for foreign investors, actively conducting the policy of investment hospitality. Investment attractiveness has become one of the major assessing points of the effectiveness of governors, heads of regions.

In recent years Swiss-Russian relations have been stable. The volume and the quality of Swiss-Russian dialogue between governments, parliaments, some ministries and agencies has been at a very high level. Constructive ties have been maintained between regions, humanitarian cooperation has been developing. In the past year we have managed to realize some important contacts between economic representatives of our two countries, during which the current state of affairs was discussed.

I would like to draw special attention to the growth of mutual interest in developing contacts between regions.

Last march His Excellency, Mr. Rustam Minnikhanov, President of the Republic of Tatarstan, visited Switzerland. During his trip he took part in the work of the Swiss - Tatarstan Business Forum, held several meetings with Swiss businessmen during which he thoroughly discussed ways of improving economic cooperation with Tatarstan.

In June 2018 Mr.Sergei Movchan, Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, paid a working visit to Switzerland.

In September 2018 a Russian delegation headed by Mr. Andrei Luzgin, Deputy Chairman of the Government of Penza Oblast, visited Zurich for the presentation of investment opportunities in Volga Federal District.

Besides, in the past two years our Embassy together with the Joint Chamber of Commerce (JCC) Switzerland-Russia and the CIS (Geneva) organized several business trips for Swiss entrepreneurs to Russian regions so that they could explore firsthand the opportunities available for participating in different projects. Among the regions visited – the Chechen Republic, the Republic of North Ossetia – Alania, the Republic of Dagestan, the Republic of Bashkortostan, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous district, Novosibirsk and Tyumen regions. Actively working in this direction was the Swiss Embassy in Moscow headed by Ambassador Yves Rossier, who went to Vladikavkaz, Makhachkala, Grozny, Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk, Rostov-on-Don and Yekaterinburg together with the businessmen of his country.

The appointment of honorary consuls on the territory of both countries also contributes to the cooperation between Switzerland and Russia. For example, just few days ago Mr. Nicolas Waefler was appointed as an honorary consul of Switzerland in Samara, and Swiss authorities have approved the appointment of a new Russian honorary consul in Zurich. In the nearest future – the establishment of the post of the Swiss honorary consul in Novosibirsk (it is highly expected that
Mr. Mikhail Yakovets, Director General of the company «Fischer Spindle Technology», will be get that position) and the Russian Honorary consul in Ticino.

At the same time we continue to use the platform of the World Economic Forum in Davos to engage in a substantive dialogue. This year the Russian official delegation was headed by the Mr. Maxim Oreshkin, Minister of Economic Development. We expect to keep on our cooperation during the 23rd session of the Saint-Petersburg International Economic Forum, which is scheduled for June 6-8, 2019. The Swiss delegation to this Forum will be headed by Ms Ineichen-Fleisch, State secretary for Economic Affairs, who will be accompanied by a number of representatives of the business community.

It is encouraging that despite all difficulties and the challenging political situation in the world none of more than 200 Swiss companies operating in Russia left the Russian market during the last five years. Several big Swiss enterprises like «ABB», «LafargeHolcim», «Nestle», «Novartis» and others invested more than
10 billion US dollars in the construction and the development of new manufacturing entities on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Heads of the above mentioned companies are members of the Foreign Investment Advisory Council led by Mr. Dmitry Medvedev, Prime minister of the Russian Federation (here I would like to draw your attention to a very interesting fact – the participation of the Swiss companies in this Council is comparable to that of German and French enterprises, and is bigger than the participation of Dutch and Italian companies).

Swiss company «Stadler Rail AG» remains active in Russia. Today the company is negotiating with the authorities of Saint-Petersburg to find a place for a new tram factory (potential investments in this project are estimated approximately about 50 million euros).

In 2017 «Liebherr International AG» opened in the region of Kemerovo (Siberia) a mining machinery service center. The total volume of investment was around 25 million euros.

With the participation of the company «Sika AG» ten factories producing dry building mixture and concrete additives were opened in the cities of Lobnya, Volgograd, Artem (Promorskiy region) and Berezovskiy (Serdlovkaya region). Total investments exceeded the amount of 300 million US dollars.

In December 2018 «Swiss Krono Group» announced its decision to invest more than 60 million US dollars in the construction of the biggest in Russia wood processing plant that will be built in the region of Kostroma and launched in 2021.

One of the leading European manufacturer of the household equipment «Arbonia» is planning to invest 28 million euros in the construction of a factory that will specialize in the production of radiators in the Stupinsky District of the Moscow region.

Moreover, this year «Nestle» is expected to launch in Vologda the biggest in Europe plant producing children’s nutrition with the capacity up to 13 thousand tons per year. The total value of the project equals approximately around
30 million US dollars.

More than 42 thousand jobs were created in the Swiss enterprises with Russian capital. Russian subsidiaries of banking structures registered in the Swiss Confederation «Sberbank AG» (Switzerland), «Gazprombank Ltd.» (Switzerland), play an important role in ensuring investment flows. They have enough capabilities to implement infrastructure and innovation projects, as well as the import substitution program in Russia.

Over the last two years we have witnessed the growth of our mutual trade. According to the Federal Customs Service of Russia the volume our bilateral trade turnover for 2018 grew by 22% in comparison with 2017 and reached 7,39 billion US dollars. Russian export grew by 23,8% to reach 4,77% billion US dollars. Import from the Swiss Confederation grew by 18,9% and reached the mark of 2,61% billion US dollars.

Despite the political conjuncture and several economic difficulties, the Russian market remains attractive for the export oriented Swiss economy.

We believe that the Swiss business has good perspectives if it continues to invest in the creation of new innovative factories, interact with our country in the sphere of high technologies and energy efficiency, medical technologies, pharmaceutical industry, machinery, manufacturing, chemical and food industries as well as in the field of waste management.

A few words about the relations with the EU. We note positive dynamics in the Russian-EU relations. For instance, for the second consecutive year trade between Russia and the European Union has been growing. Last year it increased by 20% and almost reached 300 billion US dollars. It is, of course, much less than the turnover in 2013 with 440 billion US dollars. Nonetheless, the positive trend is obvious.

Despite the known policy of Brussels, we see signs of revival also in the political dialog. The cooperation in the number of branches goes on. The contacts in the fields of science, culture, migration and counterterrorism are further developing. These contacts are certainly occasional, sporadic, but still, the tendency is inspiring. They confirm that there are no objective grounds for the further degradation of the relations. Although, we have to admit, that yet there are no conditions to go back to normality in the relationship between Russia and the European Union either.

Unfortunately, not everyone in Europe is supporting the idea of restoring the Russian-EU ties. As far as we know, the anti-Russian campaign is still on the way. They stubbornly try to portray our country as main “strategic” threat to European security. The unilateral sanctions are effectively extended.

We have always believed that sanctions are a dead end. In many European countries it becomes increasingly evident that carrying on with economic restrictions against Russia will bring them nothing except new financial losses, loss of profit and unemployment. The recent report by the Eastern Committee of German Economy calls to review the EU strategy towards our country and return to the development of full-fledged economic cooperation.

There are different assessments of the losses that the EU suffers from the sanctions regime. According to some estimates, we are talking about a sum greatly exceeding 100 billion euros. The Kiel Institute of Political Studies states that Germany alone is losing 620 million euros monthly. According to the statistics provided by the European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform alone economy of Switzerland, which has not imposed sanctions against Russia and only introduced the so called restrictive measures to prevent the circumvention of international sanctions, missed 2,4 billion dollars. That means that after EU and US imposed sanctions on Russia Swiss export dropped by 26% as compared with the period before sanctions.

Russia’s economy certainly bears some losses too. According to the data provided by the Ministry for economic development of the Russian Federation our country lost some 6,3 billion because of the sanctions.

If some people believe that Russia is going to change its policy under pressure of sanctions they are utterly wrong. They simply do not know our country. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As far as Russia is concerned, this physical law perfectly describes the essence of the developments. It is vital that European politicians finally realize that. We have repeatedly declared our readiness to lift countermeasures. But, the first step in this direction should take the EU, which started this spiral of sanctions. We hope that at the end of the day common sense will get the upper hand. Because sanctions are of no advantage both for Russia or EU.

At the same time, I would like to point out that Russia’s economy is dealing well with difficulties and reacts flexibly to changes in external economic conditions. For example, as a result of import substation policy and introducing countermeasures Russia’s agricultural sector achieved remarkable success. Russia has become the leading exporter of grain worldwide. Export of agricultural goods has for the first time surpassed that of arms. So, 2017 export of agricultural goods amounted to 21 billion US dollars while that of arms 15 billion US dollars.

To sum up. Russia is ready to develop relations with the EU that remains our important neighbor and major trade partner. We have a lot in common in terms of history, culture and human dimension since the time, when values were truly pan-European. We remain open towards working together with our European partners in building common economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok that could unite all Eurasian countries without exceptions.

Thank you for your attention.