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Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon.

Allow me to congratulate all the staff of Gazprom on the 10th jubilee of your company. I wish you success in your work and personal success.

Special words of greetings are due to the veterans of the industry. Those who several decades ago laid the foundations of the gas industry in this country, those who were aware of the importance and the magnitude of the goals set before them. In those years practically the whole nation contributed to the effort to build and develop the fuel and energy sector. And it is our duty to remember it as we mark the Gazprom jubilee.

During the past decade your company has covered a complicated path. Like other economic giants in this country you had to solve several strategic tasks at once.

First of all, you had to learn to work in a new market system, to overcome all the teething troubles and master modern methods of economic management.

That was far from easy, especially since in the early 1990s Gazprom had to play the role of one of the mainstays of a reforming economy. Besides, Gazprom has always had and still has special social obligations to the citizens of Russia. You work to bring light and heating to people’s homes. Your work ensures the normal operation of industries. Your work underpins the stability of the country’s housing and utilities infrastructure.

Considering all these factors the government has been very careful in making any moves to reform the gas sector. Gazprom as a strategic company had to be preserved and it has been preserved as a single organism. And this will remain our approach to the upgrading of the company’s activities in the future.

The Government, as the biggest shareholder in Gazprom, will seek a reduction of costs and greater effectiveness of the company, but it will back no plans for dismembering or dividing it.

At all stages in the development of the joint stock company the Government has been rendering it the necessary support. It can be said that the main result of our joint work during this complicated period has been to preserve the production base of the industry and to create conditions for qualitative changes in the work of Gazprom itself.

Gazprom today is a fully-fledged transnational company, a company that contributes 8% of the country’s GDP and about 20% of the federal budget revenue.

Gazprom is a key element in the system of the country’s energy security and its export potential. Equally important, it is a powerful lever of Russia’s economic and political influence in the world.

All this prompts us to closely follow the state of affairs in the company. It is not by chance that government representatives hold the majority of seats on the Board of Directors. That is one more proof of the strategic significance of the company and the need for government control over its status.

We are at one in our desire to make Gazprom a competitive company with modern organization. But much work has still to be done to achieve that goal.

It is necessary to master modern mechanisms of attracting investment and planning the tariffs policy. It is necessary to make corporate governance and production more effective and to consolidate assets.

Gazprom’s management has something to learn from the independent Russian and foreign producers operating in the market, including methods of introducing new technologies and new managerial techniques. It is important to understand that your position in the market should not result in your production and managerial technologies stagnating.

The company has to be made more transparent. Gazprom’s opaqueness is a serious obstacle in the way of attracting investment. It makes the company less attractive as a whole.

Besides, the sustained growth of the Russian economy demands that Gazprom think with an eye to the future. It should think about developing the fields on the Yamal peninsula, the Arctic continental shelf, the Far East and Eastern Siberia.

It is important to integrate these plans into the long-term National Energy Program that is being developed.

Of course, it is necessary to consistently strengthen our position in the world market by reaching out to the end consumer and delivering processed products. And of course, by developing such promising and dynamic markets as Europe and the Asia-Pacific Region.

In short, Gazprom today faces major tasks in terms of their scale and complexity.

I hope you will do everything to put in place a civilized development strategy for your company and to make it more effective.

In conclusion I would like to congratulate you again and wish you success, because in many ways the success of the country depends on your success.

Congratulations on the jubilee.

The veterans today told me that in their opinion Gazprom should be preserved, so I will say something that some experts know already but some may not yet know, something very important. It was difficult to rock or liquidate or dismember Gazprom in the past. Today no reorganization of Gazprom is possible without a meaningful position from the government and Gazprom itself. The government and Gazprom subsidiaries have acquired 51% of the company’s shares. The problem is closed.