Moscow press review for October 17, 2016
MOSCOW. Oct 17 (Interfax) - The following is a digest of Moscow newspapers published on October 17. Interfax does not accept liability for information in these stories.
POLITICS & ECONOMICS
The American Chamber of Commerce in Russia has asked the U.S. government to clarify why sanctions were imposed on state expert review office Glavgosexpertiza. The sanctions, assumed to have been imposed for conducting an assessment of the bridge across Kerch Strait to Crimea, are impeding projects in Russia involving U.S. companies, including oil and gas projects. AmCham hopes the U.S. will clarify that the restrictions only apply to projects in Crimea, not all of Russia (Kommersant, p. 1).
There is increasing discussion in the Russian government about whether to raise taxes on small businesses in the next three years. The economy ministry opposes the Finance Ministry's bill to raise the unified tax on imputed income in 2017-2019. The economy ministry also believes the tax deduction of up to 18,000 rubles for online cash registers should be offered to all taxpayers, not just individual entrepreneurs (Kommersant, p. 2).
Import substitution in Russia, which the government is betting on to combat the economic crisis, is being impeded by ineffective regulation and a lack of domestic suppliers, foreign investors believe. They will complain about these problems, among others, to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday at the annual meeting of the Foreign Investment Advisory Council (Vedomosti, p. 4).
OIL & GAS
Russian state oil major Rosneft, which acquired the state's 50.07% stake in Bashneft for 329.7 billion rubles last week, might be able to avoid making a buyout offer to the company's minority shareholders as required by law. A bill that would give Rosneft such an option is being considered by the State Duma. Investors are nervous and want a clear answer from Rosneft (Vedomosti, p. 1).
UTILITIES
The president of Moscow's CSKA Football Club, Yevgeny Giner has applied for regulatory approval to acquire 49% of Technopromexport, a subsidiary of state company Rostec that was founded in 2015 and in August 2016 secured a contract worth 1 billion euros to build power plants in Iran. Sources said Giner is being brought in as a private investor to increase Technopromexport's capitalization and more quickly start work on the Iranian project (Kommersant, p. 1).
METALS & MINING
The consortium of China National Gold Corporation, India's Sun Gold, the Far East Development Fund and funds from South Africa and Brazil is prepared to invest up to $500 million in the Klyuchevskoye gold deposit in eastern Russia. The project was suspended due to difficulties processing refractory ore, but CNGC has experience in this area. This will be China's first big investment in a Russian gold mining project (Kommersant, p. 7).
BANKING, FINANCE & INSURANCE
Russians with foreign bank accounts who did not report to the tax authorities on the movement of funds in them by June 1 are starting to get summons to appear before tax inspectors and could face fines if they do not appear. The Tax Service said this is intended to verify information. Analysts believe individuals who appear could in many cases face additional tax claims (Kommersant, p. 1).
Russian Agricultural Bank has sold seven of its ten grain elevators in Krasnodar Territory for about 443 million rubles plus 208 million rubles in repaid debt. The bank acquired the ten elevators in 2009 as payment for debts that were guaranteed by grain company Nastyusha, in a deal that valued the elevators at 4.75 billion rubles (Vedomosti, p. 10).
Tatarstan, Sberbank, Ak Bars Bank and MasterCard launched a 'cashless city' pilot project in Zelenodolsk last week as part of the Cashless Tatarstan program. The city's whole economically active population will get resident cards that will have a MasterCard payment app, passport data, personal insurance account and policy numbers, a transport app and electronic signature. The experiment is supposed to show whether residents of a city can be weaned off cash (Vedomosti, p. 11).
TELECOMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
Russian mobile service providers Vimpelcom and MegaFon are again considering splitting up Euroset, the mobile phone retailer they equally own. Vimpelcom has hired McKinsey to assess the cost and benefits of splitting up the retailer, which has more than 4,000 outlets. The operators could each take half and merge them with their own retail chains. They reportedly disagree on what to do with the Euroset brand (Vedomosti, p. 11).
Interview: Artur Janibekyan, CEO of Gazprom Media Entertainment Television (Vedomosti, p. 8).
AUTOMOTIVE & ENGINEERING
Russia will almost double automobile exports to 105,000-110,000 vehicles in 2017 from an anticipated 60,000 this year, and could more than double exports again to 250,000-300,000 in the next few years, the Russian Export Center reckons. The continuation of a state program to support exports, funding for which will total 3.3 billion rubles in 2016, is expected to help make this happen (Vedomosti, p. 10).
GAZ Group plans to raise its prices by another 3% as of November 1, which will bring overall price growth for its models to 10% since the start of the year. Prices hikes for Russian commercial vehicles are following on the heels of price growth for imported models. But market players reckon Russian commercial vehicles will continue to benefit from growing demand in this segment, since their prices are still far lower than for imports (Kommersant, p. 9).
