Moscow press review for April 30, 2013
MOSCOW. April 30 (Interfax) - The following is a digest of Moscow newspapers published on April 30. Interfax does not accept liability for information in these stories.
POLITICS & ECONOMICS
Russia only has five years left to carry out structural reforms, Economic Development Minister Andrei Belousov warned on Monday. If this does not happen, the Russian economy will stagnate, but if the country tackles its "systemic challenges" growth could accelerate to 6-7%, he said (Vedomosti, p. 4; Kommersant, p. 6).
OIL & GAS
Russia's Finance Ministry is proposing lower export duties on oil by 5% starting in 2014 while at the same time increase the tax on extraction. The initial phase of the process to abandon subsidies for the domestic energy market will not generate much extra revenue for the government, but will push up domestic prices. The process could take decades (Kommersant, p. 6).
Interview: Rainer Seele, CEO of Germany's Wintershall (Kommersant, p. 14).
METALS & MINING
Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi is proposing that the government cancel the results of the tender for the Norilsk-1 nickel deposit won last year by a unit of Musa Bazhayev's Russian Platinum. The losing bidder was Norilsk Nickel (Vedomosti, p. 10).
Russian steel and coal group Mechel, which is struggling under a heavy debt burden, has managed to refinance loans it was supposed to pay off this year. First Mechel borrowed $1.3 billion from VTB, and now it has borrowed another $1 billion from Gazprombank (Vedomosti, p. 12).
BANKING, FINANCE & INSURANCE
Russian insurers' payments on mandatory car insurance claims grew by a third to 17.3 billion rubles in the first quarter of 2013, while the car insurance premiums they collected rose by only 11.5% to 26.1 billion rubles. This is the first time claim payments have grown faster than premiums in this sector (Vedomosti, p. 1).
The first exchange traded fund began trading on the Moscow Exchange on Monday. The ETF's underlying asset is Russian corporate Eurobonds. However, so far trading volume for the new instrument leaves much to be desired (Vedomosti, p. 10).
RETAIL & CONSUMER MARKET
Russia's federal government might prohibit the country's regions from subsidizing vodka producers by giving them back a portion of alcohol excises. Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich has come out against the practice (Vedomosti, p. 11).
TELECOMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
A New York court has frozen the assets of Cukurova Group, including a controlling stake in Turkey's biggest mobile company Turkcell. Now the Turkish group has nothing to use as collateral to take out a loan and pay off Russia's Altimo, to which it owes about $3 billion (Vedomosti, p. 11).
Russia's advertising market will grow 12.5% to 335 billion rubles in 2013, while the global market will grow by only 3.9%, ZenithOptimedia forecasts. However, the growth of advertising spending is expected to slow in most Russian media, except print and television (Kommersant, p. 13).
TRANSPORTATION
The Russian government will sacrifice other toll road projects in order to build roads from Moscow to St. Petersburg and Minsk in time for the World Cup tournament in 2018. The government approved the updated program to 2020 for state road company Avtodor last week (Vedomosti, p. 1).
The distribution of forces on the most profitable segment of Russia's rail freight market - oil and oil products - could soon change as Rosneft, which accounts for a fifth of this market, plans to start awarding these contracts by tender. Rail freight operators will be able to compete for contracts worth over 13 billion rubles to ship 40 million tonnes of oil freight (Kommersant, p. 1).
AUTOMOTIVE & ENGINEERING
Russian engineering company Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) will on Tuesday present two new investment projects in St. Petersburg that will cost a total of 18 billion rubles, which is a substantial amount for the city. The cost of UVZ's new projects is comparable to all the crisis aid the company received from the government in 2008-2009 (Kommersant, p. 1).