subscribe to news Alexey Vyalkin took part in the RUEF Council and held a meeting of the Committee for Development of the Exhibition Industry Infrastructure

On 20 September, Alexey Vyalkin, Director General at EXPOCENTRE AO, took part in the Council of the Russian Union of Exhibitions and Fairs, which was held in the form of videoconferencing.

The Council reviewed the issues of RUEF’s current activities, including the implementation of the Roadmap of the Russian Government and the work of the International MICE Industry Consortium. Considerable attention was paid to the RUEF’s role in implementing the provisions of the Strategy for the Development of Exhibition and Convention Activities until 2030, recently adopted by the Russian Government.

The day before the first meeting of the RUEF Committee on Infrastructure Development and Financial Support Measures for the Industry was held by Alexey Vyalkin, who holds the position of Vice President of this industry association of exhibition organisers in Russia and heads this committee.

The Committee Chair welcomed the participants in the meeting representing the largest congress and exhibition companies of Russia and dwelt in his speech on a set of priority tasks that the trade show industry faces in terms of further increasing its capabilities in the national economy and development of entrepreneurship in our country.

He emphasised that RUEF members have already done a lot of important work on financial support measures for the industry, suggesting that they focus on promoting those initiatives that have been approved by the government, as well as pay special attention to fine-tuning the mechanisms of such support that have already proved themselves at the regional and federal levels.

Speaking about promising areas of work in this area, Alexey Vyalkin dwelt on the issues of redistribution of part of the public funds allocated for co-financing the participation of Russian enterprises in congress and exhibition events abroad, noting the need to reorient these funds to co-financing and the same participation of companies in events in Russia.

“Of course, here we should talk about those major industry events that already have the relevant potential for exhibitors and visitors,” stated the speaker. “The list of such events can be prepared, including through an exhibition audit, but we need to rely on statistics as well.”

Alexey Vyalkin drew the attention of the meeting participants to the fact that the practice of supporting the participants in the events, implemented by the My Business regional centres to support entrepreneurship and exports, should be expanded.

“It seems important,” said Alexey Vyalkin, “to continue promoting those initiatives aimed at increasing funding and scaling up the existing programmes to support the participation of regional manufacturers, primarily small and medium-sized enterprises, in our events”. He proposed to pay special attention to defending the existing RUEF initiatives on the development of infrastructure in the regions, which should correspond to the world level, emphasising that “it is necessary to work with business, regional authorities and business associations; PPP mechanisms are essential here”.

Russia now ranks 8th in the world in terms of the volume of indoor exhibition space. Their total volume amounts to 1.2 million square metres, which is equal to 2.8% of the entire world fund. However, the number of fairgrounds with the area of more than 5 thousand square metres is less than, for example, in the Netherlands or Mexico. This indicates the lack of specialised infrastructure in the regions that meets a set of standard requirements, which are reflected in the Strategy for the Development of Exhibition and Convention Activities until 2030.

“The bulk of the sites are in our country up to the Urals,” Alexey Vyalkin said, “and this is another side of the issue of infrastructure development in the Far East. The President spoke about this at the Eastern Economic Forum. Naturally, when making a decision to build and upgrade infrastructure in a particular region, it is necessary to conduct very thorough market research into the needs and capacity of the market. The site’s connection with the region, its economic needs, and its investment potential should be taken into account. Here the investment component can also come to the forefront, because with such interaction between the authorities and business, the creation of new event infrastructure or upgrade of the existing one can become a promising anchor investment project, which any governor tries to attract to his territory".

The participants in the meeting also discussed other issues related to the mechanisms of financial support for the trade show industry.

Press Service, EXPOCENTRE AO