It is my great pleasure greeting all of you here in Kuala Lumpur at this outstanding event jointly organized by the Russian Export Centre, Asian Strategy & Leadership Institute and Malaysia-Russia Business Council!

This Forum takes place just one month after the first inaugural meeting of the Joint Russian-Malaysian Commission for Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation was held in Moscow. That gathering outlined the priority areas for mutually beneficial projects in airspace, education, IT, healthcare, agriculture and many other spheres. As a logical follow-up today we brought to Malaysia the Russian industrial leaders in aircraft production, shipbuilding and railway transportation as well as their supplementary IT branches.

There are altogether more than 30 Russian corporations, institutions and companies represented in this hall. Among them there are such giants as the United Aircraft Corporation, which once consolidated all top-notch civil and military Russian aircraft producers and currently has an annual turnover exceeding 6,5 billion US dollars; Almaz-Antey Corporation, a global leader in creating radar-based air defense systems supplying its products to dozens of countries worldwide; the prominent Moscow Aviation Institute, cradle for the unique Russian engineering school in airspace, which already has a number of Malaysian students and graduates; United Shipbuilding Corporation accumulating the key Russian assets in this industry; the internationally recognized and legendary Alexeev Construction Bureau, whose featured inventions are the hydrofoil vessels able to ply over the sea surface at a speed exceeding 35 knots, to name a few.

Just yesterday I gladly witnessed the opening of the new petrochemical plant Orgkhim-Norman Process Oils in the state of Johor, an innovative project done on mostly Russian investments and unique Russian technologies to produce “green” technical oils for the Malaysian rubber industry. That is a pilot, pioneer project, destined to become an exemplary success story of public and private Russian investments, which enjoyed a comprehensive support of the federal and regional Malaysian authorities.

We are looking forward to promoting new “points of growth” in bilateral cooperation, first of all in airspace technology, medical engineering and pharmacology, energy and shipping industry, bio- and nuclear technology, cybersecurity, robotics, artificial intelligence and other venture projects. I am sure that today Russian representatives will share with our Malaysian hosts more ideas and perspective plans on the opportunities Russia can provide to this hospitable and sun-shined land.

Finally and again, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to our local host, ASLI and Malaysia-Russia Business Council, for making this business mission possible, and I wish all participants to have useful and fruitful talks here.

Thank you.