Today Italy is one of our most important trade partners in Europe – Vladimir Dmitriev

ITAR-TASS (itar-tass.com),
Moscow,
December 2 2013 14:37

Various events organized by the Russian-Italian Forum-Dialogue within the Framework of Civil Societies took place on November 26, in the course of the Russian-Italian interstate consultations headed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. Established in 2004, the Russian-Italian long-term project has become an important instrument of bilateral cooperation. Vnesheconombank Chairman Vladimir Dmitriev told ITAR-TASS about results achieved and prospects for future cooperation. He is the Co-Chairman of the Russian-Italian Forum-Dialogue for the Russian side.

-Vladimir Alexandrovich, Russia and Italy are tied by long-time trade and diplomatic relations. How would you assess the level of cooperation between our countries?

-Today, Italy is one of our most important partners in Europe. In terms of its trade turnover with Russia which amounted to 45.8 billion dollars last year it ranks third after the Netherlands and Germany. Almost 45 years ago Italy was the first country to have concluded a long-term agreement on gas supplies from the USSR. And now Italy is the second largest consumer of Russian gas. The Italian Concern Eni is working closely with Gazprom on the Southern Stream Gas Transport project and it is also cooperating with Rosneft company on the shelves of the Barents and Black seas. Enel concern owns almost 70% stake in OGK-5 company. Finmeccanica concern is a leading partner of Russian companies in the high-technology sector. It implements projects in the aerospace sector, aircraft construction as well as in modernizing railway transport, postal and telecommunications. CJSC HeliVert is operating efficiently. HeliVert is a joint venture of Helicopters of Russia and AgustaWestland. They have already assembled the first six helicopters. JSC Sukhoi Civil Aircraft is cooperating with Alenia Aermacchi in manufacturing the Superjet-100 regional aircraft. The backlog of orders is more than 200 airliners. Today, about 500 Italian companies are operating in Russia and cooperation is expanding actively.

-Could you tell us about Vnesheconombank’s cooperation with its Italian partners?

-I’m happy to note that the Bank participates in many projects I’ve listed. Our partners in these projects are Italy’s financing institutions. We signed an agreement on cooperation with Italy’s credit agency SACE and France’s agency Coface to form an integrated system of funding international sales of Superjet-100 aircraft. The agreement provides for using a credit-leasing scheme for funding export supplies of the Superjet-100 to foreign customers against insurance coverage of SACE and Coface.

“Cooperation between Russia and Italy is advancing in all directions”, said Russian President Vladimir Putin. In my opinion one of the most successful projects in which Vnesheconombank participated is the construction of the Tobolsk-Polymer gas-chemical complex which is the largest one in Europe. The project was implemented with the participation of Intesa Sanpaolo SpA and SACE.

We also entered into agreement with Intesa Sanpaolo SpA and UBI Banca ScpA on providing financial support for small and medium-sized enterprises for an amount of 150 million euros.

Today, VEB Group is comprised of about twenty subsidiaries, namely, banks, investment, leasing, engineering and project companies - the Direct Investment Fund, the Export Credit Agency of Russia, regional development corporations and consulting representative offices in the regions.

This set of institutions allows us to create investment-financing platforms to implement not only individual projects but also programs of comprehensive development of territories and research production clusters.

-What agreements did you sign within the framework of the Russian-Italian Forum-Dialogue?

-In Trieste we signed several agreements with such Italian financing institutions as Mediobanca and export insurance agency SACE as well as a Letter of Intent with company CO.MO.I. GROUP SA on developing a new mechanism for funding Vnesheconombank customers under contracts with Italian suppliers.

-These are not the first agreements between VEB and Italian banks?

-In fact, I’d like to recollect one of them - an agreement on cooperation with Italian banking group UBI Banca on the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. It provided for UBI Banca to extend credit facilities worth up to 50 million euros. For a number of reasons this agreement’s implementation was suspended.

“Cooperation with Russia is a guarantee for success for Italy’s economy”, said Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. In order to give a new impetus for cooperation Vnesheconombank offers to discuss the possibility for UBI Banca to enter into capital of an International Fund to Support Entrepreneurship that is being established now. The Fund is being established together with Germany’s KfW Banking Group with the participation of the European Investment Bank. It is designed to support Russian medium-sized enterprises that demonstrate good growth dynamics. Business is to be funded primarily through debt instruments.

The Fund’s is to be comprised of several tranches with different risk and profitability levels. Vnesheconombank is to invest funds in the most risky tranche thus making it possible to protect investors of senior tranches in case of losses. Taking into account the Fund’s conservative policy and strict requirements for investees, it is safe to say that investments in a senior tranche will be almost risk-free.

-In 2014, Italy is to assume the EU presidency. And in this respect does VEB have plans to expand cooperation with its Italian partners?

-We intend to step up our efforts to fill the Forum-Dialogue with real business content.

In particular, we can resume the activity of a regular Russian-Italian Business-Dialogue. It could be held as part of the already functioning conference “The Russian Economic and Financial Forum in Italy”.

Representatives of big business participate actively in a dialogue devoted to issues of economic cooperation between Russia and Italy but representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises are less active. An International Forum devoted to supporting small and medium-sized enterprises is to be held in Moscow on April 23-24, 2014. I think that in the course of this Forum we’ll be able hold a round-table discussion on Russian-Italian efforts to support small and medium-sized enterprises.

Interviewed by Alxei Bukalov, Vera Shcherbakova.

/Corr. ITAR-TASS, Rome/