President of Russia : Meeting with Norilsk Nickel CEO Vladimir Potanin

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Potanin, please report on your company's performance last year.

Norilsk Nickel President and Chairman of the Management Board Vladimir Potanin: It was a complicated year, but we did well. We have launched a long-term development programme to 2023, which is designed to increase ore mining by 50 percent and enrichment by nearly 100 percent. It also provides for modernising production capacities to make Norilsk Nickel the world's largest company with cutting-edge equipment in its sphere. We plan to become the most effective mining and metals company.

Moreover, modernisation will help us resolve long-term environmental problems. We plan to reduce emissions by the projected 75 percent by 2023.

Mr President, we will also maintain social stability while working towards these goals. To maintain employment stability and honour collective agreements, Norilsk Nickel will create an additional 3,000 jobs so that our modernisation plans do not result in social problems. This calls for investing some 1 trillion rubles, out of which 250 billion will be spent on environmental protection.

We hope to be able to implement these plans with support from the government, which is unavoidable in case of large and super-large projects.

When it comes to ecology, we are not sitting on our hands either. Last year, we shut down the nickel plant in Norilsk, which allowed us to reduce emissions within city limits by 35 percent. It was the first step towards our goal, which we hope to achieve by 2023, as I have said.

To be continued.