St Peterburg's Davos opens on Friday

ST. PETERSBURG, June 17 (Itar-Tass) -- Official opening of the 15th
St. Petersburg's international economic forum will take place on Friday.
The event is expected to feature over 10,000 participants, including
countries' leaders, ministers, businesses, scientists and reporters.
The major topics of the forum will include investment climate,
globalisation of the economy and global economic growth. Russia's
President Dmitry Medvedev and China's Chairman Hu Jintao will participate
in the plenary session on Friday.
The forum will discuss not only Russia's business potential, another
topic would be devoted to the growing role of emerging countries in
formation of the post-crisis world's economic space. This topic will be
discussed over several sessions. One of them will be devoted to currencies
of the BRICS countries - how emerging markets influence the world
financial system.
Russia's Presidential Aide Arkady Dvorkovich said that Russia's
president will take part in Friday's discussions about new ways to achieve
energy security. Ministers, leaders of international energy companies,
including LUKOIL's Vagit Alikperov, BP's Robert Dudley, Rosneft's Eduard
Khudainatov, will discuss changes in the structure of demand for energy
resources, new technologies, strategies in exploration, production,
processing and selling. The forum will feature Russia's Deputy Prime
Minister Igor Sechin, Executive Director of the International Energy
Agency Nobuo Tanaka.
On Friday, Medvedev will present the Global Energy international
prize. This year's winners are Russia's academician Philipp Rutberg - for
fundamental research, and design of energy plasma technologies, and the
USA's Arthur Rosenfeld - for outstanding research and implementation of
energy saving technologies.
On the same day, Russia's president will have dialogue with Russian
and foreign businesses, bilateral meetings with foreign countries'
leaders, who have come to participate in the forum.
On the fields of the forum, there will be a special meeting devoted to
organisation of Russia's fund of direct investments. Dvorkovich said that
the future fund is forming up its team and prepares necessary documents.
"At this stage, the most important thing is to collect a team of
professionals, who will manage the fund, and this is what we are doing
now. This will be an international team," he said. Kirill Dmitriyev will
be the fund's director general, Dvorkovich added.
On the closing day of the forum, June 18, participants will take part
in a discussion devoted to Russia's chairing role at the APEC forum.
Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov will present a report
on preparations for the APEC-2012 summit, which will be organised in the
Russky Island in the Far East.
Implementation of private companies' research in production of major
defence industrial corporations will be on the agenda of a roundtable
devoted to international cooperation in defence industry.
The forum's final plenary session will be Managing Fault Lines And
Avoiding Future Crises. The session will feature Dmitry Medvedev,
Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Finland's President Tarja
Halonen and Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Weather forecasters say that during the forum, the temperature in St.
Petersburg will not be above 19 degrees. Hopefully, showers will not
disappoint the investment climate of the event.