Highlights of St. Petersburg's 2009 economic forum
This year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the 13th since its foundation that took place on June 4-6 in Russia’s Northern Capital, was, expectedly, fully devoted to today’s pressing global issues and other recent negative developments in the global economy, namely, the world economic crisis and its negative consequences as well as different exit strategies from the current financial crunch, discussions focusing on the reformation of all the global economic institutions and the future format of the world financial architecture in the post-crisis era.
However, unlike in the previous years, this year’s forum, in view of the current negative tendencies in national and in global economies, was not conceived by the organizers – the Russian government and profile ministries and departments – as a purely ‘investment forum’ but rather as an ‘intellectual platform’ for large-scale discussions on all issues concerning the depressing situations in today’s global business and the ways to rectify them, according to official sources. This, in parts, has helped explain the rather modest volume of contracts and memorandums of investment intentions penned during the forum, which contrasted sharply in comparison with the sums of similar investment contracts valued in tens of billions U.S. dollars signed at the past forums.
Thus, commenting on the results of this year’s forum, Russian Economic Development Ministry Elvira Nabiullina preferred to only ‘verbally describe’ the amount of signed investment contracts, simply noting that transactions worth ‘some billions’ of U.S. dollars were concluded, without specifying the concrete sums or figures involved in the deals. This, indeed, is a deviation from traditions, as the announcement of the investment contract figures has always been the headliner of the main news disclosed at the ends of previous forums. For example, it was with huge pride that Nabiullina and other top Russian government officials disclosed the overall sums of investment contracts at the 2008 and 2007 forums, which totaled $14.6bln and $13.5 bln , respectively.
In the absence of the desired investment news, the forum’s participant turnout, another equally significant indicator of influence of major conferences of such international levels, was moved to the top of the news agenda at the final press conference. Here, it must be noted that SPIEF-2009 fully met the international grade, with over 3,500 participants from all over the globe in attendance. Specifically, the huge turnover included over 250 official government delegations, including five heads of states/governments, eight vice presidents/prime ministers, 26 ministers from different countries and 46 governors. Beside foreign governments, local and international businesses were also heavily represented at the forum, evident in the presence of CEOs and other top executives of over 500 leading domestic companies and 400 world’s largest foreign corporations that personally graced the event. And, finally, both Russian and foreign media, a constant feature of conferences of such international scale and level, also took an active part in the forum, with over 1,200 print journalists/TV correspondents on the scene to cover the forum. On the whole, over 83 countries were represented at the forum, according to the official data.
Naturally, such level of high-profile participation by world’s top politicians and business titans, especially on the background of a raging global economic crisis of an unprecedented scale, was seen as a ‘flying success’ by the organizers. The huge turnout was readily reflected in the speech of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who, by traditions, always presents the keynote address at the opening of the forum. Expectedly, the president dedicated his speech to the prevailing situations on the global and Russian economies, the ongoing crisis phenomena and some of the best probable exit strategy scenarios from the present economic depression. Locally, he also dwelled on his ‘pet project issues’ of transforming the ruble into a major international reserve currency, making Russia a global financial center and embarking on full diversification of the domestic economy with the ultimate goal of putting it on an innovative economy development trajectory.
“The huge turnout of leading global economic players at this year’s forum in St. Petersburg has once again confirmed the fact that Russia is still highly attractive to investors.”
The Russian president later explained the nearly impossible decision dilemma faced by both foreign governments and local and international investors at the beginning of the year on whether to remain at home in order to personally oversee the operative management of their countries/companies battling the global financial meltdown or take sometime off to attend the St. Petersburg forum. “At the end, most chose the second variant, and this is a good indicator of the collective wish of the all participants in global economic activities to take part in discussions of key global issues, finding answers to the most complex international economic and financial questions, readiness to compare different countries’ national anticrisis programs,” he said, noting that such behavior is “an obvious testimony to the fact that Russia still remains a highly attractive investment destination for global economic players.”
A similar view was aired by the Russian economic minister, noting that the quality of an economic forum depends not on how many people are in attendance, but their calibers, who they are and what they represent. “All the important people were in attendance and this enabled all the issues scheduled for discussions at the forum to be fully discussed,” Nabiullina noted. “Specifically, the forum enabled us to deliberate on the various anticrisis economic stimulus packages adopted by different countries, which led to the understanding of the impossibility of exiting this global crisis one by one, on an individual basis, and hence, the urgent need for discussion and adoption of a joint exit strategy from the current economic downturn.”
One of the conclusions drawn from such discussions was that about 75%, or an overwhelming majority, of the forum participants, believed in the urgent necessity of reforming today's global financial markets. More specifically, about 75% of world’s leading experts in the fields of global economy, politics and international finance said the existing global financial architecture will definitely not remain the same after the end of the current global economic crisis, according to data of the poll of participants at a plenary session, titled, Postcrisis Financial Architecture. 
Commenting on these poll data, Alexei Kudrin, the Russian deputy prime minister, who also doubles as the nation’s finance minister, noted that the expectations of the titans of global businesses were normal and expected. “These poll results are quite natural, as each of those present in this hall today, and this includes both businesses and governments, has personally felt the full impacts of this current crisis.”
However, the main lesson that the St. Petersburg forum participants would have taken home, according to experts, is the advice given by the Russian president against being ‘excessively optimistic’ at this point in time because of the last good news indicating the appearance of some ‘green shoots’ of imminent global economic recovery. The president was referring to some pundits saying that the global economy has crossed the bottom of the crisis curve, nearing the end of the crisis and all other types of similar highly optimistic forecasts. “Russia, like most other countries, has for the past difficult nine months of crisis been able to achieve relative financial stability in its economy. But the volume of the yet-to-be-solved problems is, in monetary terms, still being measured in trillions, and this is irrespective of the leading global currencies used in such computations,” Medvedev noted. “Therefore, in my opinion, it is still ‘absolutely too early’ at this point in time to uncork a bottle of champagne.”
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