Due to the measures taken to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 infection, the event was held in combined, online and offline format.

Alexander Liberov, member of the AEB Board noted, that for many years the Association has been fruitfully cooperating with the Ministry of Economic Development, and the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2018 allowed not only to strengthen this process, but also to fill it with real content. 

"Among other areas of joint work, I would like to mention the development of the Russian "green taxonomy" adopted in November and initiated by the Ministry and VEB.RF. We firmly believe that this will help make the Russian economy greener and attract new international investors," said Alexander Liberov.

He also reminded of a number of issues which still concern the business, such as: a rule "the second one out" which negatively affects the European companies making pharmaceutical and medical equipment, announced non-extension of the zero import duty on e-vehicles, necessity of a mutual recognition of certificates of vaccination between various countries and others.

In his speech Maxim Reshetnikov thanked the AEB for the long-term cooperation on a wide range of tasks, including the facilitation of the entry of foreign HQS, emphasizing its impact on the investment climate in the country. In addition, the Minister outlined the key areas of Russia's economic recovery after the crisis.

According to Mr Reshetnikov, Russia's GDP growth in 2021 may exceed the current official forecast of 4.2%. He noted that the October data were quite optimistic, in general, in January-October 2021 the growth of the Russian economy is estimated at 4.6%, which allows us to expect growth for the whole year above the forecast of September.

Among the plans for the future, the Minister mentioned the work on the Declaration on the interaction of big business with SMEs, the development of management practices in the field of ESG, the continuation of the reform of control and supervision and "regulatory guillotine", the development of digital production, etc.

Commenting on the climate agenda, the Minister said that the law on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions adopted this year "has fixed the turn of the agenda towards climate protection," noting the need to develop this direction in the near future, in particular in reducing the carbon footprint and achieving carbon neutrality.

At the end of the briefing, participants had the opportunity to ask Mr. Reshetnikov questions. 

The question and answer session was moderated by Tadzio Schilling, Director General of AEB. He thanked the Minister for the opportunity given to the European business to openly discuss the most important issues on a wide range of topics and noted that one of the main objectives of the AEB is to develop an active dialogue between foreign investors and government representatives.

The representatives of the AEB member-companies got the answers to their most actual questions directly from the Minister of Economic Development. Maxim Reshetnikov expressed his wish to keep the established tradition and to continue the format of regular communication on the AEB platform in the future.