20 Sep 2017 16:15

Govt not considering state subsidies for Russian Post - Dvorkovich

BEIJING. Sept 20 (Interfax) - The Russian government is not considering providing state subsidies to Federal State Unitary Enterprise Russian Post, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich told journalists.

"No, this is not being considered," he said, responding to a question on whether the government was considering issuing state subsidies to the company.

"Well with certain regions they are working. And certain regions in some places are supporting them. Formally, this is also state support, since it comes from regions. But there is nothing planned from the federal budget," he said.

Russian Post chief Nikolai Podguzov said earlier that the enterprise was interested in receiving state support, including financing.

Currently Russian Post's strategy calls for developing the company without investments from the state.

Podguzov said that it was unlikely Russian Post would receive state funds next year. "This is unlikely, taking into account the current stage of the budget process," he said, commenting on the possibly of state subsidies being included in the 2018 budget.

He said that Russian Post was a socially-oriented company "which represents the government in areas where nobody else does...I believe that we need to have the possibility of state support too." According to him, this referred to above all, the company's operations in remote regions of the country where its services were not commercially profitable.

The last time Russian Post received funds from the federal budget was in 2014. The funds were issued to offset losses for distributing printed periodicals and providing public Wi-Fi access, as well as to cover a portion of expenses connected with operations of Russian Post's departments in the Far North.