00:00We are now honored to hear from the President of the Russian Federation, His Excellency, Vladimir Putin, to address the
00:08gathering.
00:26Thank you very much.
00:28I thank you, dear friends, Excellency, Honorable Prime Minister, colleagues, Excellencies, Heads of State, friends in the audience, representing the
00:43business communities of our countries, our today's event, as its tradition, is a prelude to the BRICS summit.
00:51And this august assembly shows the growing interest in strengthening business contacts and relationships across the BRICS space.
01:03It is evident that reliable business-to-business ties and economic partnerships, that is the backbone of international economic relations.
01:14It helps build these relations in a stronger, resilient manner.
01:18It helps overcome the problems the world is facing.
01:23And right now the world is undergoing structural, deep, profound shifts,
01:27which is explained by the fact that the so-called old leaders, which used to be the vanguard of economic
01:34growth in the second half of the 20th century, are being replaced by new engines of growth.
01:40Certainly, when I say old, this is just a formality, all of us, we understand what we're talking about.
01:48And these so-called old leaders are still in possession of great strong suits and well-developed infrastructure, technological advantages,
02:01scientific advantages, scientific schools, and so on and so forth.
02:05That said, this is in the nature of things, this is in the nature of humanity, and in the nature
02:13of economy, that changes cannot be stopped.
02:19The world is always changing, and this is attested to by the objective facts of the last five years.
02:26And I think these statistics have already been cited by our colleague from Indonesia.
02:31Over the last five years, more than 40% of the world GDP have been produced by the BRICS countries,
02:39whereas the contribution of the so-called G7, the Green 7, I don't know why they call that the Group
02:46of 7, it stands at only 29%.
02:53This is the case.
02:55Now, speaking about the growth of the world economy over the same period, we see that more than half of
03:03that growth has been accounted for by BRICS, whereas the G7 has only accounted for 18%.
03:11Why is that?
03:14The answer is simple.
03:16The BRICS countries account for more than half of the world's population, and that is why they have great, dynamic,
03:23vibrant domestic markets.
03:25Our countries see an explosion of growth of urban settlements, urbanization is happening very fast, and national companies are on
03:35the ascendant, demonstrating themselves to be world leaders.
03:44Whereas Mohindra, a company from India, offers IT and AI-based solutions, the Chinese Huawei is a global technological giant
03:53of world renown, whereas Brazil's Embraer has strong positions in aerospace industry, whereas DPO from the UAE is a company
04:05that is working efficiently in logistics,
04:08whereas Russia's Rosatom has been recognized as the world's top one company in peaceful nuclear energy.
04:17And there are many other success stories from our business community, but behind each one of us is hard work
04:28on a daily basis amid great competition, and competition is something I would like to dwell on more,
04:35because we have been told for quite some time that competition is sacrosanct, not to be touched by our Western
04:44competitors doing everything to get back their erstwhile competitive edge,
04:50and sometimes this competition is taking some ugly forms, and this is something our colleague from Iran has spoken about.
04:57But these ugly forms is something we see even at the state level, at the government level, sometimes there are
05:03measures resorted to of a physical nature when pipelines are being destroyed,
05:10when attempts are undertaken to block international transport corridors to seize maritime vessels, other illegal restrictions are being applied,
05:22and there is also the threat of so-called secondary sanctions against those who do not want to follow someone
05:28else's interests and rather looks after their own.
05:32And I know Kuliks can cite hundreds of examples to support that, but you know that more than 30,000
05:40sanctions have been slapped on Russia,
05:42which is twice as much as the number of all sanctions against all the other countries of the world combined.
05:49This is the statistics.
05:51Against this difficult backdrop, Russia has been working actively, relying on its business, science, education, engineering, schools on our personnel,
06:02on Russian citizens.
06:03And Russia has managed to achieve great success. We've reinforced our national sovereignty. We're developing ties with reliable, predictable partners.
06:14Over four years, only the geography and the scope of our foreign trade have been transformed entirely.
06:21Russian economy has kick-started some structural economic changes which have rendered our economy more resilient, more agile, and more
06:30mobile.
06:30During the last three years, the economic growth in Russia has been superior to the world average.
06:38In 2023-2024, the GDP rose by 10.3 percent, whereas the unemployment rate has decreased to a record low
06:49of 2.3 percent.
06:51We have greenlead large-scale technological innovations such as the implementation of AI, autonomous systems, digital platforms, and cutting-edge
07:03financial instruments.
07:04These innovations are mostly based on our domestic Russian solutions as well as on solutions from our partners in BICS.
07:12All of that is yet another testimony that even amid very hard restrictions from the outside, we can set forth
07:21ambitious goals and be successful in achieving them.
07:24There's another thing we've got to state and accept.
07:28The countries that initiated the sanctions pressure are facing the problem of industrial decline and budget deficit.
07:43They cannot follow suit.
07:45They are facing some very difficult consequences.
07:50And this is not just pure speculation.
07:52This is what we can judge based on their statistics.
07:57I've spoken about their budget deficit, about their growing public debt, as well as industrial decline.
08:03All these are facts of life.
08:05In Eurozone, the leading economies, and I'm not going to name them specifically, but they are facing a decline of
08:14industrial output of 8 percent over the last several years.
08:18And this is a very big figure for them.
08:21Whereas our goal is to tap into the potential of development for our countries for the sake of our nations,
08:29to pursue business diplomacy,
08:31to make sure that our companies and our entrepreneurs find it easier to find partners, pay and invest in our
08:41countries.
08:43At the same time, far be it from us, to isolate ourselves either at the government level or at the
08:49corporate level.
08:51We're not against anyone.
08:53And what we are doing is not against anyone either.
08:56We are in favor of our interests and we stand ready to work together with all of our partners, old
09:03ones and new ones.
09:04We are open to working with the whole world.
09:07And I'm confident that the Business Council has become the mechanism that gives an additional impetus to our trade and
09:14economic ties.
09:15It will help implement numerous projects in infrastructure, logistics, finance, technological cooperation and elsewhere.
09:24In order to intensify these activities, Russia has set up a national committee for business cooperation, which counts more than
09:3440 biggest Russian companies.
09:37This committee seeks to build a substantive program for cooperation with foreign partners.
09:44I would like to reiterate Russia is open to interesting promising initiatives in tourism, industry and trade.
09:51Together with our partners, we stand ready to contribute to world energy and food security to building reliable logistic routes
10:01such as the Arctic Transport Corridor and the North-South Transport Corridor.
10:06We also intend to enforce our cooperation and personal training and applied research and smart technology, unmanned transport and so
10:19on and so forth.
10:20But in order to be successful in that regard, we need funding.
10:24And the NDB is already doing a lot.
10:29And based on the NDB, Russia proposes that a new investment platform should be set up, which will be trying
10:37to secure funding from private sectors and make our economy more competitive.
10:44We're hopeful that this idea will be supported by our partners and other BRICS members, distinguished friends through the combined
10:53efforts of the government, private sector, academia and the rest.
10:57BRICS is building a resilient and viable platform for global growth.
11:01The most important elements of this growth are not being imposed on anyone from the outside.
11:09It's not being imposed on us by the so-called golden billion.
11:13Nor are we trying to impose anything on anyone else.
11:16Our approaches are based on innovative and cutting edge solutions.
11:21We prioritize national interests of our respective countries in pursuing these goals.
11:26Yes, this work is very difficult, very meticulous and assiduous.
11:30But the BRICS countries have shown they are ready to work hard, to cooperate on an equal footing, to see
11:39a shared future.
11:41And they are up to any challenges that might arise.
11:44And that means that our endeavors will be met with success.
11:48I would like to wish you all the best.
12:00Thank you, Your Excellencies.
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