Nanoindustry’s performance in 2008 and tasks for 2009 discussed in Kazan

Tatarstan Prime Minister first deputy Boris Pavlov has today held an extended meeting of the interdepartmental task force on developing Tatarstan’s nanoindustry. Attendee at the meeting was the Rosnanotech Managing Director for Investments Dionis Gordin.

Also took part in the session heads of Tatarstan companies, rectors of higher educational establishments and representatives from the republic’s leading educational and scientific centres.

Opening the meeting, Mr Pavlov remarked on the main results of the industry’s performance in 2008 and its tasks for 2009, saying that the President of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev had approved designing an integrated programme of the Tatarstan’s nanoindustry project development in 2009-2013 as well as the designing and implementation of the integrated interregional pilot project called International Nanotechnology Centre.

Tatarstan’s first vice premier went on to remind that the ongoing global crisis needed not to become a reason to scale down the innovative programmes and projects. The main task in the current situation is to find suitable instruments to finance them, able to facilitate the local economy's further development. The main problems leading to restricted funding of investment projects include business’s poor self-management and increased bureaucratic barriers for its promotion, low state governance efficiency, low affordability of loans and insufficient cost reduction at industrial companies. All the factors have a negative impact on the economy in the current critical conditions, the official said.

Dionis Gordin noted that the republic’s scientific potential, well-developed infrastructure and technology parks allows Tatarstan to become a leader in developing Russia’s nanoindustry but that attention should be focused on the most promising and elaborated on projects and on creating a system of their promotion via a “single window”, rather than on tackling everything at a time, thus increasing the effectiveness of the work on project promotion to financial development institutions for co-financing. The Tatarstan's balanced system of relations between politicians and businessmen allows speediest decision making, but the quality of porject application documents needs to be improved.

In the conclusion, Mr Gordin said the Rosnanotech’s General Director Anatoly Chubais was to arrive on a planned visit to Tatarstan in the last third of March.

The meeting discussed a broad scope of issues including proposals on the interdepartmental task force on nanoindustry development’s 2009 action plan, using nanotechnologies in the State Institute of Applied Optics investment project, requesting its co-funding at the expense of Rosnanotech and others, said the first vice-premier press secretary.