In a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, potential investors in the country, including Alcoa (NYSE:AA) CEO Klaus Kleinfeld let Putin know what their major concerns were concerning doing business in the country.
While differentiating between different regions of the country, Kleinfeld identified the four major areas that need to be addressed:
“Obviously there’s different stories to different regions but there’s a theme of basically four major factors that could potentially be released. Number one is inadequate training of the workforce. Number two, it's difficulties for accessing financing. Number three, it's high levels of corruption. And number four it's unfair competition from the grey market.”
While acknowledging the challenges, Putin did say there have been improvements, and he was committed to moving as quickly as possible to make things better.
He said, “The Russian government has a strong incentive to quickly improve investor sentiment. It has an extensive program of privatizations to get away – with as many as 20 of the country's biggest state run companies marked for possible sale.”
The goal is to raise up to $50 billion over the next five years. To be successful, the challenges will have to be dealt with as soon as possible.
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