Medvedev highlights visa issue
The issue of visa-free traveling is an important component in the Russian modernization program, President Dmitry Medvedev says.
-We are ready to demonstrate goodwill to resolve the visa issue and take practical steps, President Dmitry Medvedev said in his speech at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum Friday. The visa issue was mentioned by the president as one of the points in his modernization program. He highlighted that all foreign investors and business people, who are engaged in significant business in Russia, will get long-term visas.
The speech, key parts of which resembled an election campaign speech, reiterated several of Medvedev’s main policy positions, first of all with regard to the modernization program. It also included some new points. Among them was the President’s intention to decentralize power in the country. A special high-level working group will in the near future be established to prepare proposals on decentralization of power. The decentralization will also include corrections of the current federal tax system and budget relations, the president said.
Read also: Russia-EU visa-free plan by summer
He also stressed that what he wants is not single-point changes in the country, but a complete “system change”. –My choice is a serious renewal of not only the obsolete elements of the economy, by of all public institutes. Here are needed not only single-point changes, but also system changes”, he underlined in the speech.