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President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Good afternoon, Vladimir Olegovich,

I agreed with you and your colleagues to meet regularly to discuss the problems facing our economy’s development and the state of affairs in the world economy. I think the time has come to do just this once again. After everyone comes back from their holidays we could organise a meeting with the board of directors of the RSPP [Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs] in the same format in which such meetings have traditionally taken place.

Problems have built up and various events have taken place. I think there is plenty to discuss, in terms of the world economic situation and as concerns resolving problems with our own policies. I would therefore like to hear your view on the issues you think most relevant, and we could think about the agenda for this meeting.

President of Interros Holding Vladimir Potanin: Thank you for remembering your promise to meet regularly with members of the business community. I think that this meeting would indeed be very relevant now.

We have an agenda we would like to propose. We think that tax issues are most relevant today. This concerns reducing taxes and improving the way individual taxes are administered. I know that you keep up to date on this subject but it is a matter that demands constant attention and I think therefore that it should be on the agenda.

The problems in the international financial markets, the liquidity crisis, are not a secret for anyone, and this of course restricts Russian companies’ access to world financial markets, and Interros Group too is feeling this.

It would therefore interest us to talk about expanding the possibilities for obtaining credit within our country, including in view of the fact that our economy has built up a stable base over these years. Many of our companies need credits in order to keep our growth rate as the world economy slows down, especially companies that have now started working on innovation and social projects.

We would like to discuss these issues. Furthermore, the RSPP has put forward a number of initiatives related to education programmes and other social programmes, and we would also like to go over these.

Dmitry Medvedev: I think this is quite sufficient an agenda for us to be able to plan the meeting. I will check my schedule and we will definitely plan this meeting for September.