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President Vladimir Putin: Good Day, dear colleagues!

As you know, last week, yesterday and the day before yesterday, there was a meeting in Petersburg with representatives of American and German business. These meetings and talks were organised at the request of our colleagues. I would like to thank the members of Government who took part in this work, and the people who prepared these events. They were beneficial, timely and quite comprehensive on the problems that we touched upon during these talks.

Many companies which were represented by their CEOs work very actively and with considerable results on the Russian market. Quite honestly, there was not a single major problem mentioned by them as an obstacle to expanding this cooperation. And, I would like to particularly stress, this does not just concern the growth in trade turnover – it concerns the interpenetration of the economies of our countries and the true economic integration of the Russian economy into the world economy. This concerns both our partnership with the Americans, and to an even greater degree, with our German partners.

In connection with this, I note with pleasure that the main provisions and tasks which were outlined in the Address have been taken on for implementation by Government. And some of the tasks which we outlined have already been implemented at legislative level. I mean the abolition of tax on inheritance and gifts in part. The Duma passed in the first reading a law on reducing the time limitation on so-called nominal deals from 10 to three years. We know that this primarily concerns privatisation deals. The law on profit tax has been passed which improves the investment attractiveness of the economy. A bill has been submitted to the Duma on improving tax administration – a whole package which we talked about and which the Ministry for economic development and the Finance Ministry, the Government leadership and other colleagues worked on for several months. I am glad this work has for the most part been completed.

I hope that we will continue to keep working this actively in future.