On April 19, the premises of the Industry & Trade Ministry in Moscow will host the first meeting of the coordination committee set up to promote Yekaterinburg’s application campaign for EXPO 2020. This meeting will become the first one dedicated to EXPO 2020 that several scores of federal agencies, state-run corporations, and large businesses representatives will attend.

The agenda of the meeting covers a whole range of questions, including the main stages of the application campaign and looking at the preliminary results of the steps already taken. Most importantly, the attendees will talk about the state guarantees for the application and the ways in which the federal agencies can interact to support the campaign.

Acting Industry & Trade Minister Denis Mansurov said on the eve of this first meeting: ‘The coordination committee’s performance is meant to stress the fact that Russia’s applying for the right to host EXPO 2020 has full state support on both the regional and the federal levels. In trying to join the efforts of all the state ministries and departments as well as those of big business and the general public, we demonstrate the seriousness of our intentions in this campaign.’

Deputy Chair of the coordination committee and Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin also said that the committee’s meeting would demonstrate that EXPO is not merely a regional-scale project but a nationwide event that will affect the country’s entire population and will promote the development of Yekaterinburg and Russia’s international and foreign economic ties with the whole world.

Over thirty representatives of the Russian business community and of the federal agencies have already confirmed their coming to the meeting, including RU-COM BOD Chairman Mikhail Abyzov, Bank VTB President and Chairman of the Board Andrei Kostin, Head of Russian Government’s press secretary Dmitri Peskov, President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, and others.

This is going to be an in camera meeting.