Discours et allocutions de l`Ambassadeur

Dear Mr. President,

Dear members of the Joint Chamber of Commerce Switzerland-CIS,

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

Today, business circles and business diplomacy play a special role in maintaining trust between our countries. We appreciate the eagerness of our Swiss partners including the Joint Chamber of Commerce Switzerland-CIS to foster cooperation with Russia and its businessmen based on mutual benefit and respect of interests.

I would like to especially point out the personal contribution of Mr. Mettan – with his direct participation in the business-missions that were organized in past two years to the Chechen Republic, the Republic of North Ossetia – Alania, the Republic of Dagestan, the Republic of Bashkortostan, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Novosibirsk Oblast and Tyumen Oblast as well as the presentation of Moscow in Geneva just a week ago.

Commonly acceptable agreements and mutual respect of interests are needed now more than ever in the sphere of international trade and economic ties, which are being unprecedentedly politicized today. The values of free trade are held hostage to trade wars and other forms of unfair competition. This issue in particular was also discussed during the latest session of the World Economic Forum and during the WTO ministerial meeting held on the 25^th of January in Davos.

Russia is ready to cooperate with everyone who is interested to do so, both in Europe and in Asia. This concerns the trade-economic and banking spheres, or any other sphere. We are dedicated to creating economic areas, which would be open and would be based on WTO-principles and would not jeopardize the global trade system by pushing through closed regional projects.

Our country consistently promotes the philosophy of integrity of economic development, which is incorporated in the Greater Eurasian Partnership initiative introduced by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. This large-scale project is open to all Asian and European states, members or non-members of different integration blocs. Its consistent realization could facilitate establishing a broad economic cooperation in Eurasia and, ultimately, become the foundation for a renewed architecture of continental security that goes in line with the realities of the 21^st century.

We also do not exclude the opportunity to create a free-trade zone between the Eurasian Economic Union of which Russia is part of and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) with Switzerland as its member. In 2011-2014 11 rounds of negotiations took place between then states of the Eurasian Customs Union and EFTA, the latest one was held in January 2014 in Astana. Anti-Russian sanctions introduced by the EU froze the dialog, hopefully not permanently.

A few words about Russia-EU relations. Their current state cannot be considered to be normal. The myth of the “Russian threat” is being imposed on the Europeans mostly from outside. The short-sighted decision of the European Union to introduce unilateral sanctions under direct command from Washington remains a major irritant. It is noteworthy that Americans themselves do not suffer losses, but instead they fill the niches left vacant by European firms and companies forced to leave the Russian market (for example, our trade turnover with the US grew by 16% in 2018). Brussels «froze» most dialog mechanisms of practical cooperation that proved to be effective. When relations with Europe began to «shrivel» due to sanctions and other political processes and when the trade volume shrunk rapidly (in 2013 the trade turnover was about 440 billion dollars and in 2017, despite its growth in comparison to 2016, it was just 217 billion dollars, which is half as much than three years ago), we began looking for opportunities to compensate this «lost» volume of mutually beneficial economic cooperation, including that in the Far East.

On the Chinese direction as well as on the Indian, and to a certain extent on the Japanese and on the Korean ones, such opportunities continued to grow, because these countries significantly increased their potential in this period. They also demonstrated interest in our goods, not only in fossil fuels but also in cooperation in the field of space, atomic energy, aviation, car industry and many other areas. It was a real response to those conditions, which exist presently for the most effective development of economic ties.

As you may know, at the moment our bilateral relations with European states are being rapidly restored. However, we cannot say the same about the European Commission. The European Commission is still hostage to so-called «solidarity» and «consensus» when a small group of countries, which doesn’t want good relations with Russia, forces all others to keep a “low profile”. I believe, however, that we won’t always witness a situation where the EU policy towards Russia is mostly and sometimes decidedly determined by the Russo-phobic Baltic states and by countries that are leaving the European Union.

European business circles are the most objective ones in assessing the situation. A report by the Eastern Committee of German Economy proved to be the most indicative in this matter. It 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 727 million euros monthly.

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.

Switzerland has not imposed sanctions against Russia, it has only introduced the so called restrictive measures to prevent the circumvention of international sanctions. Thanks to this pragmatic approach, the Confederation has a window of opportunity for the entrepreneurs, who want to enter the Russian market. Although even this approach also hinders the development of bilateral economic relations.

Now, a few words about Russian economy.

Russia is a dynamically developing and capacious market with the population of some 147 million people. Working conditions on this market are improving annually.

In recent years, Russia has been steadily improving its position in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Ranking. Last year Russia was rated 43^rd (in 2012, it was ranked 67^th ). Also, our country ranked 31^st in the «Doing Business-2018» report of the World Bank and the International financial corporation (in 2010 Russia occupied the 124^th place). Our goal for the nearest future is to reach the 20^th place or perhaps to do even better.

Russia is also among top 15 countries in terms of the budget transparency.

A lot has been done in Russia to improve the framework conditions for doing business; much attention is paid to fighting corruption and creating a transparent and comfortable business environment.

According to the Russian Federal Service of Statistics, last year our GDP has increased by 2,3% (although the preliminary forecast was 1,8%). In nominal terms its volume reached 103,6 trillion US dollars.

The best results among major industry sectors were shown in the extraction of natural resources (+ 3,8%), cоnstruction (+4,7%), financial and insurance activity  (+6,3%) and hotel services and public catering (+6,1%).

As compared to  the last year, Russia displayed increasing growth in industrial output (3%).

Our country ranked 5^th in terms of the GDP at purchasing power parity.

Despite the weakening of the ruble annual inflation did not exceed 4,2%. Unemployment rate reached its historic minimum level of 4,8%.

Over the first three quarters of 2018 fixed assets investment have amounted to 4,1%. Freight traffic and retail sales are growing (+2,6%). The increase in consumer demand is also visible. After a long period there is now though moderate but still positive dynamics of growth in the real income of the population (in 2018 - 0,5%).

There is also an increase in trade surplus: in 2017 it was approximately 115 billion US dollars, while in 2018 it has reached 157 billion US dollars within the first three quarters of the year. According to the recent data, by the end of 2018 it could approximate 190 billion US dollars. 

Financial market remains stable, while gold and foreign exchange reserves are growing (in early 2018 the reserves amounted to 432 billion US dollars, and then in December 2018 they rose up to 464 billion US dollars, which indicates a  more than 7% growth).

The Russian National Wealth Fund has also increased by approximately 22%.

In other words, basing on the analysis of the key parameters, the Russian economy is in a positive trend and it allows the business-community to make long-term plans and to be confident of their implementation.

As to the Russian-Swiss relations as a whole and trade cooperation in particular, we can conclude that despite complicated political background they have been developing steadily over the last years. Positive signals indicating the intention to get the cooperation with Russia back on track are coming from our Swiss partners.

Last March Mr. Rustam Minnikhanov, President of the Tatarstan Republic, visited Switzerland. During his stay, he took part in the «Swiss-Tatarstan business-forum» organized  with help of your Chamber of Commerce.

In June 2018 Mr. Sergey Movchan, Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, took a business trip to the Confederation.

In September 2018 a Russian delegation led by Mr. Andrey Luzgin, Deputy-President of the Penza region Government, came to Zurich to make the presentation of the economic potential of the Volga Federal district of Russia. At the end of the year (somewhere in October) we expect the arrival of a delegation from Arkhangelsk  region to present their economic as well as cultural opportunities.

Another round of the Russian-Swiss financial dialogue at the level of the Deputies of the Heads of financial ministries was held in October 2018 in Moscow.

The Joint Intergovernmental Commission on trade and economic cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Swiss Confederation continued its active work, the 19^th session was held in Bern on December 4, 2018.

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 delegation was headed by Mr. Maxim Oreshkin, Minister of economic development). We expect to keep on our cooperation during the 23^rd session of the Saint-Petersburg International Economic Forum, which is scheduled for June 6-8, 2019.

More than 200 Swiss companies are successfully working on the Russian market. Several big Swiss enterprises like «ABB», «LafargeHolcim», «Nestlé», «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 point out 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) and we are determined to continue this fruitful cooperation.

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 (Switzerland) AG, Gazprombank (Switzerland) Ltd., Vnesheconombank representation) play an important role in ensuring investment flows. They have enough capabilities to implement infrastructure and innovation projects, as well as the import substitution programme 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 of our bilateral trade turnover for 11 months in 2018 (from January until November) grew by 27,5% in comparison with the same period in 2017, and reached the mark of
6,55 billion US dollars. Russian export grew by 33,8% to reach 4,24 billion US dollars.

Import from the Swiss Confederation also increased by 17,3% and reached the mark of 2,30 billion US dollars.

The range of import and export products for both sides hasn’t changed much. The main items of the Russian export remained non-ferrous and precious metals, oil and its refined products, minerals and products of chemical and pharmaceutical industry. Switzerland exported watches, machines, boilers and the respective equipment, metals and jewelry.

Trade in services has also been dynamically developing over the past year. According to the Russian statistics, after the first six months of 2018 the turnover in this sphere reached 3,66 billion US dollars (export from Russia -
almost 2 billion US dollars, import – 1,72 billion US dollars).

According to the data provided by the Bank of Russia, by July 1, 2018 the volume of the direct Swiss investments in Russian economy was 10 billion US dollars, and the volume of the direct Russian investments in the Swiss Confederation - 21 billion US dollars.

It is obvious that despite the actual political conjuncture, the Russian market remains attractive for the export oriented Swiss economy.

We believe that Switzerland has good prospects if it continues to invest in the creation of innovative production on the territory of the Russian Federation, and to  cooperate with our country in the sphere of high technology and energy efficiency, as well as in the areas of medical technology, pharmaceutical industry, machinery, manufacturing, chemical and food industries and waste management.

Thank you for your attention.