The 13th St. Petersburg Economic Forum lasted three days from June 4 to 6. After President Putin in 2007 recommended to Russian state officials not to go to a similar type of event in London, the St. Petersburg Forum became considered the largest business gathering in Russia.

Over three and a half thousand participants, more than 250 official delegations, close to 400 foreign and 300 domestic companies came to Russia’s northern capital. Altogether 83 countries were represented.

President Medvedev began his address talking about the weather – unfortunately it was not good during the forum – but quickly moved to matters of substance: he discussed the global economic crisis and the ways to deal with it. In the weeks preceding the summit, positive trends started to emerge in the world economy – financial markets recovered and the price of oil exceeded the USD 65 per barrel mark. In Russia, the rouble was strengthened against the dollar and the euro. Still, the President remained skeptical: “It is too early to drink champagne. The crisis is like a multi-year plant that can withstand our efforts.” The Russian President noted that the fight for the health of the global economy will cost trillions of dollars that everybody would have to pay.  

The President also called on the forum’s participants to develop new standards for regulating the financial markets, to reform international financial institutions, and not to give in to protectionism. Expanding the number of reserve currencies was also a theme in Medvedev’s speech – the President said that the use of the euro helped many European countries during the economic downturn.

The participants of the forum took part in several round tables. During one of these sessions the question that produced much discussion was “What is the price of oil.” In the course of these discussions, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin gave criticism of the current situation with oil prices. The cost of fuel, he said, is not dependent on supply and demand, but on speculative geopolitical factors.

An interactive vote took place among the panel’s participants on the issue of what should be the price of oil. Most of the participants were in the range of 70 to 80 dollars. In the view of the majority, such a price would be advantageous for both consumers and producers. Dmitry Medvedev also took part in the vote. He later commented that he initially wanted to choose USD 150 per barrel, but then decided to go with the more realistic figure of USD 70. Deputy Prime Minister Sechin said that in two-three years, the price of USD 150 might also seem real. 

Investors complained to President Medvedev about the problems with the Russian bureaucracy.

Klaus Kleinfeld, the president of Alcoa, said that his company was asked to provide 47 thousand pages of documents to authorities in Samara last year. Many of the papers have been sent to the inspectors five or even seven times. The President promised to solve the issue.

In all, during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum several multi-billion-dollar contracts in the energy, nanotechnology, transportation, and education sectors were made between investors and business partners.