Foreign Investors Who ‘Think Clearly’ Will Listen to Putin and Set Up Shop in Russia

In his speech at the Russia Calling! Investment forum on Thursday, Putin highlighted the “irreversible changes” taking place in the global system of international relations and its drive toward multipolarity, both politically and economically.

The president highlighted Western elites’ efforts to slow the growth of the countries of the so-called “global periphery,” which are treated like modern-day “colonies,” through means that contradict the principles of market economics they claim to stand for.

Putin suggested that the West was destroying the system of economic relations it built up in the first place.

SWIFT, the international system of financial transfers, has been discredited and is becoming archaic, Putin said, and being replaced by alternative tools, with Russia strengthening its sovereignty in this area.

“The financial infrastructure based on the domination of the dollar and the euro and transactions solely through Western banks and the SWIFT system has also been discredited. Today, it has been successfully replaced by the national currency transaction system,” Putin said, referring to the Russian ‘System for Transfer of Financial Messages’ (Russian acronym SPFS) platform.

“The objectives set by our adversaries have not been reached. On the contrary, we have reinforced our sovereignty. And this is only one example. In finance, in industry, on the consumer market, we are consistently rejecting the services, the brands and intermediaries that have been imposed on us. We’re actively working in our domestic market. This leads to systemic positive results,” Putin said.

He pointed out that despite attempts to isolate and destroy the Russian economy, Russia’s GDP is expected to grow by at least 3.5 percent in the current year – well above all members of the European Union.

Efforts by Western governments to scare companies away from Russia had failed, he added. Their presence has not only remained steady over the past year-and-a-half, but grown, the president stressed.

“Working in Russia and with Russia has always been profitable, and always will be. This has been confirmed over the centuries by the experience of merchants, entrepreneurs and businesspeople all over the world. Since the beginning of March 2022 through to November of this year the number of foreign companies in Russia…did not decrease,” Putin said. “The number has increased. By March 1, 2022, there were 24,100 foreign companies registered in Russia. By November 1 of this year, there were about 1,500 more companies, or to be more precise 25,600 foreign companies. That is quite indicative. This shows their readiness to work in Russia.”

‘Russia a Very Welcoming Place for Investment’

“If they’re thinking clearly and not being overly influenced by the narratives in Western media, Russia is a very welcoming place for investment” by foreign businesses, says Paul Goncharoff, an analyst and management consultant with firm Dezan Shira & Associates. “Frankly, it’s a political question, not an economic question.”

“To make a good business decision, if it runs against the grain of political populism of any Western country, it’s very difficult. Entire companies can be canceled in the newspeak. So What Putin is saying is very much common sense, it’s what is obvious to businesspeople. And the infrastructure of Russia is really quite ideal,” the pundit told Sputnik.

Many companies have done precisely that, Goncharoff said, with many visible Western players that were on the Russian market officially ‘leaving’ Russia, but in fact, have remained, “rebranded, repackaged with another chain of ownership.”

As far as Putin’s comments on the growth rate of the nation's economy relative to those of the EU, the commentator stressed that “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, and certainly any businessman with an ounce of common sense in their head could have foreseen that coming,” with European countries effectively “sanctioning themselves out of Russia” by joining on to Brussels and Washington’s sanctions craze.

“That resulted in them having to buy the same energy, oil, electricity, etc. not from the closest well-developed supplier, being Russia. Now they’ve got to go to India to buy their Russian oil or they’ve got to go through Greece or whatever. So these are multiples of costs. And I think you can see that with the increase in the cost of energy as well as materials that they were once dependent on Russia providing, they’ve priced themselves out of growth,” Goncharoff summed up.

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‘Russia a Very Welcoming Place for Investment’