One thing is clear: this year's international economic forum in St. Petersburg won't be about big yachts, celebrity concerts, or tens of billions of dollars in clinched investment deals.
It's all about anti-crisis measures - and international investors among the expected 2,000 participants will be anxiously awaiting signs from the government that the only way from the bottom is up. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has called the forum a chance to assess what the government has done so far to get the country out of the crisis - and where it is headed.
"Of course, the positions of our countries, including the BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, China] nations, on participation in overcoming the crisis will be developed here," Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying. "I believe this is a very timely forum in the crisis period," he said. "Today Russia has become the site for discussion of developing markets' situations."
Plans for this year's forum were scaled back after its budget was slashed by 25 per cent, but there is a surprisingly hopeful climate. Investors this year are hungry for information and signals, experts say.
President Dmitry Medvedev is set to deliver a keynote address at the plenary session titled "Global economic crisis: First lessons and leading the way forward."
Business dialogues with the EU, the US and the Arab world will focus on protecting investment and avoiding protectionism, while there'll also be intense interest in whether Russian-US relations are thawing ahead of President Barack Obama's visit to Russia in July.
"If last year we were encouraged by various protocols and intentions, this year people's hands are tied," said Igor Yurgens, head of the Institute of Contemporary Development, a think tank close to Medvedev, who will be a moderator at a forum panel on social development.
"Apart from the strategic partners who are already in Russia and prepared to work, foreigners are hampered by the crisis," said Yurgens. "They need credit, and credit is hard to come by. We certainly can't expect the kind of burst in investment activity that we saw last year."
Some $14.6 billion in deals were signed at the forum in 2008, including St. Petersburg's $10 billion Western High Speed Diameter, Russia's first toll highway. Deals worth $13.5 billion were signed in 2007. The Ministry for Economic Development could not provide forecasts about whether any deals were planned at this year's event.
But while this year is obviously not the time to clinch major development contracts, it is precisely because investors have so many questions that the forum will stand out as the major economic event of the year.
"There's going to be a huge number of people there, serious investors in Russia," said Roland Nash, chief strategist at Renaissance Capital who will moderate a panel on the future of reserve currencies. "And they will be asking questions: Is Russia still committed to being plugged in to global finance? What is it going to do to back up the rhetoric with reforms? Is Russia still open for business?"
Nash said there was a lot of hope because the Russian markets had bounced back much more quickly than expected.
"This is the biggest surprise, bigger than the crisis itself," he said.
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