MOSCOW, October 15 (Itar-Tass) —— Russian regions themselves should fight for their investment attractiveness, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has set the foresaid task at a meeting of the Advisory Council on Foreign Investments here on Monday. The project of standard activities of the executive authorities to improve the investment climate has already been developed and will be tested in 13 regions.
“Due to some clear reasons in our country as generally in all big countries the life conditions and the conditions for business differ greatly,” Medvedev stated. “Certainly, the investors always consider those regions, where the conditions are comfortable and which have a normal developed infrastructure,” he noted.
The premier recalled that he was engaged in business in the nineties, when foreign businesspeople visited only Moscow and St. Petersburg. “No other cities existed for them in our country. I had to explain to them that it would be possible to visit some other cities. But investors asked simple questions: Do normal hotels work there? Does an airport operate there? What is the situation with the banks there? And it was hard to answer these questions then,” he said. “Now the situation has changed, but the differences persist,” he noted.
“There are very promising places, where the investors cannot be found frequently,” the prime minister remarked. “But I realize that this is a question not to our investors, Russian and moreover foreign investors. This is a question to us. Therefore, the regions should fight for their attractiveness themselves,” the premier set the task. “The project of standard activities of the executive authorities in the region was drafted to deal with the business climate, we will test it in 13 regions and will begin to put it in practice in all other regions. The personal motivation of regional chief executives is very important,” the prime minister noted. Medvedev noted that he means legal motivation, when the improvement of the investment climate is set as a criterion of their success, the key indicators of efficiency are outlined with due account of the opinion of businesspeople.