Dear friends!

I welcome all the participants and guests of the International Business Summit of 2014 in Nizhny Novgorod!

We live in an era of increasing competition of technologies, when it is not the exploitation of natural resources, but intellectual property, support and development of innovations are the guarantee of high places of a nation in the global economic hierarchy, and the issues of technological leadership are among top national priorities.

Here, on the banks of Oka and Volga rivers, one of the most powerful economic agglomerations of the country and a new way of life of the Russian economy based on high-tech innovations and modernization of traditional manufacturing industries are being actively formed. Therefore it is difficult to imagine a better platform for meetings of scientists, experts and businessmen, which combines economic theory with business practice.

My greetings to the sponsors, participants, and guests of the Summit!

Today, a favourable environment encouraging efficient economic development and investment inflow is a conditio sine qua non for the prosperity of the whole country as well as any of its regions. The availability of well-developed infrastructure in the region belongs to such environment.

The federal-aid project to construct a high-speed railway will make a trip between the towns within the railroad area faster to increase the population mobility. Once implemented, the project will improve interregional transportation and boost the economic development and job creation

Dear participants, sponsors, and guests

The infrastructure capacity of any region or the whole country is determinant for their capabilities and indicative of the investment environment within an area.

A major challenge in the current context is a comprehensive evaluation of the macroeconomic impact generated by building high-speed railways in Russia and their integration into the global rail network.

The Summit will address the logistics of passenger transportations, their intermodal development allowing for the changing configuration of passenger traffic, and innovative solutions in the railway sector, and consider who is to put into practice all these strategies and the ideas of today and tomorrow, i.e., human resources.