UrBC, Moscow, April 20, 2012. Over thirty representatives of the Russian Government, big businesses, and NGOs held the first meeting of the coordination committee on promoting Yekaterinburg’s application for EXPO 2020 in Moscow. The meeting was chaired by Russia’s acting Industry & Trade Minister Denis Manturov. This in camera meeting was spent discussing the main stages of the process and the part the country’s key ministers could play in promoting the application.

It was reported that in case Yekaterinburg’s application wins the future EXPO village would cover the area of more than 550 hectares, with 175 countries taking part in the fair, while Yekaterinburg would be hosting up to 200,000 visitors from all over the world daily for six months.

‘Russia is in close connection with Europe and the rest of the world not only politically and through business and economic ties but also the cultural and the social ones. Today, Yekaterinburg is an example of a modern, dynamic, and open Russian city in all respects, a city that deserves to host such a grand world-scale event as EXPO. At the end of today’s meeting, we can say that we are prepared to unite all of the government, the business, and the society’s efforts on both the regional and the federal levels to support the application campaign,’ Manturov said at the end of the meeting.

‘For this application to win, Sverdlovsk Region and Russia must work together. The region needs some increasing and viable support from the government. We will mainly cooperate in aiding the application committee in its attempts to promote the application internationally, in preparing a state guarantees portfolio, and in involving the business community in EXPO 2020 preparation process,’ said deputy chairman of the committee and Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin.