Goldman Sachs will improve Russia's profile for $500,000

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Published time: January 29, 2013 12:14
Edited time: January 29, 2013 18:47

One of the world’s biggest investment banks is to help Russia get rid of some of the black spots on its investment profile. Goldman Sachs will be directly telling investors about Russia’s effort to develop its economy.

The Ministry for Economic Development and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) agreed to pay up to $500,000 over three years to Goldman Sachs to have the country’s success stories delivered to foreign investors, according to Vedomosti daily.

The investment bank will help establish a dialogue between foreign investors and rating agencies, as the head of Goldman Sachs Russian office Paolo Zannoni explained. The bank will also take part in presentations and foreign business trips, Sergey Belyakov, Deputy Minister for Economic Development added.

Improving Russia’s image doesn’t replace the need to take real steps to improve the investment climate in the country, Belyakov underlined. “…we remain not efficient enough in delivering the information about our action to investors,” Belyakov said. At the moment changes for the better in the Russian economy remain either unnoticed altogether by foreign colleagues, or distorted.

Among other initiatives to make Russia look better on the international arena is a working group that’ll include top officials from Vnesheconombank, state lenders and the RDIF, according to Kirill Dmitriev, the RDIF head. In Davos last week the RDIF announced its own image campaign “Invest in Russia,” aimed at explaining the impressive changes the Russian economy has made since 1999.

German Gref, the head of Russia’s top lender Sberbank, has complained the message about Russia’s progress isn’t always delivered properly, with its rankings often underestimated.The state of the financial sector in Russia was placed 134th on a list of economic competitiveness compiled by the World Economic Forum. This places Russia behind Albania, Armenia, Botswana and Peru.