On 15 October, the Russian Pavilion of the Universal Exhibition EXPO 2015 in Milan held a Forum on economics Moscow-Italy: Working Together. This event became traditional and was held by the company for the 5th time. This year, together with the General Invest holding, the organisers of the event included the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Department of Foreign Economy and International Relations of the Moscow Government.
Among the partakers of the Forum, there were the Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin, the Russian Ambassador in Italy Sergey Razov, the Minister of Operations, Commerce and Tourism of the Milan City Hall Franco D’Alfonso, the First Secretary of the Italian Consulate in Russia Enzo Marongiu, the Deputy Mayor of Moscow Government, Head of Department of Transport and Development of Road and Transport Infrastructure in Moscow Maksim Liksutov, Head of Department of Science, Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship of Moscow Oleg Bocharov, and other government authorities and representatives of large business companies from Russia and Italy.
The CEO of General Invest holding Vincenzo Trani pointed out in his speech that often people in European countries become prisoners of the information war against Russian Federation, thus getting not only just partial, but also distorted information about its economy and the whole financial sector. According to Vincenzo Trani, this trend was a result of the conflict in Ukraine and the standoff of Russia with the US. The goal of the forum is to show the true situation currently present in the country to Italian investors.
Speaking about Russian economy and its growth, Vincenzo Trani drew the audience’s attention to the fact that modern Russia and Russia a year ago are two different countries in terms of diversification and economic power. Earlier, the Russian Federation had a significant power mainly in military forces and exporting energy sources. Nowadays, Russia has seen a breakthrough in a number of directions, including agriculture, automotive industry, tourism, which, to Trani’s mind, has become possible thanks to the carefully chosen and coordinated by the government strategy of economic growth. The recent devaluation of the national currency changed the travel destination of Russian tourists from foreign countries to the local market. Yesterday a wheat importer, today Russia with its third place in the world is a leading wheat exporter. The perfect leap in automotive industry has brought the country to the 7th place in the world, with 1.5 mln cars being manufactured per year. For comparison, the Italian automotive industry currently manufactures just 300 thousand cars per year, mentioned Vincenzo Trani.
At the end of his speech, Vincenzo Trani pointed out that this result became possible not only thanks to Vladimir Putin, but also to the well coordinated efforts of the whole team, the whole Government. He was also quite confident that the growth of Russian economy will very soon bring Russia back to the leading global positions.
Italian scientists and experts presented the results of the research conducted in the Bocconi University of Milan and spoke about the state and new opportunities of economy growth in Russia.
Leaders of Italian and Russian companies specialised in construction, architecture, urban economy, transport and logistics, as well as representatives from a number of Russian and Italian universities took part in a lively discussion.
At the end of the first day of the Forum, a number of agreements on cooperation were signed. The Department of Science, Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship of Moscow have signed a protocol on cooperation with the Italian Trade Promotion Agency (ICE), the All-Russian Research and Design Engineering Institute of Metallurgy Machinery Manufacturing Industry have agreed with Bonetti Construzioni Meccaniche about locating the industrial equipment manufacturing on their territory.
The science park Strogino and the Italian industrial company Frastema have announced about their intention to start manufacturing medical equipment in Moscow. The Moscow State Technical University named after Bauman have signed a trilateral Agreement on development of process innovations with the University of Genova.
Every year the Forum organised by General Invest finished with signing a number of global agreements that aim to enhance the cooperation between the two countries. This year, despite the sanctions, was not an exception, and demonstrated the will of the Italian and Russian businesses to preserve and further encourage the mutually beneficial cooperation.
