Igor Finogenov Addressed Yalta Business Meetings
Almaty, 20 April 2011. Total investments by the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) in its five member states exceeded $2.8 billion, said Igor Finogenov, Chairman of the EDB Executive Board, in his address at the Yalta Business Meetings , an international investment forum of CIS countries held in Yalta last week.
The EDB’s implemented and ongoing projects have the potential to generate mutual trade flows for a total of over $806 million annually, and mutual investments totalled $886 million, commented Igor Finogenov.
The EDB Chairman elaborated on the Bank’s efforts to develop new investment instruments. «As a major investor in Eurasia, the Bank is interested in the development of capital markets, particularly, stock markets in the EDB member states».
The EDB, assisted by PARTAD, conducted a study of the prospects and problems of integration of the Russian and Kazakh capital markets. A comparative analysis of legal frameworks showed that there are no insurmountable legal barriers to mutual capital flows between the two countries, and the main legal preconditions for such flows are already in place, commented Finogenov.
At present, said Finogenov, a number of initiatives are being voiced including creating an integrated stock market of Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, which will include a technically integrated trading and clearing space.
The main objective of this work is to «attract long-term investors to Eurasian economies, e.g. through the stock markets of Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus».
As part of the Yalta Business Meetings, the EDB delegation also attended sessions of the CIS Economic Council and the EurAsEC Integration Committee which were held in the Crimea these days.
This was the first time Ukraine hosted such high-level events in the CIS format organised on the initiative of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich. The Ukrainian party intends that the Yalta Business Meetings would become a leading economic forum for discussing models of CIS countries’ progressive development.
At the current forum, a draft agreement on a free trade zone was approved in general; it provides for the creation of a single contractual basis for full liberalisation of trade in the CIS. Import duties would be minimised and export duties fixed, and after the agreement is effected, negotiations would be held on phasing out the duties. As is expected, this document will be signed during the forthcoming meeting of the heads of CIS countries in Minsk in May.