Leningrad region was declared the leader in the rating of the quality of investment policy by the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. Deputy Chairman of the Government of Leningrad Region – Chairman of the Committee for Economic Development and Investment Activity Dmitry Yalov answered the question of a reporter of Delovoy Peterburg about the secret of success:
It is not easy to specify just one secret, otherwise the Ministry of Economic Development and Agency for Strategic Initiatives would have named it as the best practice and would have told everyone about it. I think that this is just a meticulous work and the result is composed of details.
First of all, this is personal attitude of the Governor Alexander Drozdenko. There are some things which can be felt at fingertips: when an investor is treated like a friend and we understand his tasks and help to solve them, and sometimes investors may face cynical attitude, “these are not our problems” approach.
Second, we help not in manual mode, but we create a system. This is, I guess, the main key of our success. How many investors can receive my help in manual mode? 10-12 per month, not more, because I won’t have enough time. That’s why we have established Economic Development Agency of Leningrad Region which provides comprehensive support to investment projects.
One of former governors had a motto: “I give my personal phone number to investors”. Our Governor also gives his mobile phone number, but problems are solved using the appropriate infrastructure. After all, when you have problems with a credit card you don’t call to the Vice-President of a bank.
And the third thing is mobility. We’ve never thought that we are big and great, we are happy to learn from new management teams. From Udmurtia, for example. They work with export very well: they made an export accelerator, they know how to find unusual enterprises. We learn project management from Belgorod region. Process reform – from Vologda region. This doesn’t mean that we can’t do this. We’ve started this work, we had questions and we share our experience as well, told our colleagues about it. But we definitely need to be afraid of becoming dizzy of success.
Full version of the interview (in Russian).
