Moscow press review for April 17, 2013
MOSCOW. April 17 (Interfax) - The following is a digest of Moscow newspapers published on April 17. Interfax does not accept liability for information in these stories.
POLITICS & ECONOMICS
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will address the State Duma Wednesday with a report for 2012. Members of all Duma factions, even United Russia, will use this as an opportunity to criticize the government and individual ministers, particularly Education and Science Minister Dmitry Livanov and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov (Vedomosti, p. 1).
OIL & GAS
For the first time since Igor Sechin took the helm at Rosneft, a politician has ventured to directly and harshly criticize the state oil major's work in their region, calling it incompetent. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said his republic is unhappy with the company's low contributions to the regional budget and foot-dragging on building a refinery in the region and promised to "take measures" (Kommersant, p. 1).
Russian tycoon Gennady Timchenko, the co-owner of oil and gas trader Gunvor, believes Rosneft should lower prices for oil it sells to traders. The state oil major disagrees, saying its prices are appropriate for the market (Vedomosti, p. 12).
METALS & MINING
Norilsk Nickel has hired three new senior executives, including Interros deputy head Andrei Bugrov and former deputy energy Minister and Rosneft CFO Pavel Fyodorov. Their main objective will be to develop a new strategy for the Russian mining giant and sell off noncore assets so that the company can pay shareholders $9 billion in dividends for 2012-2014 (Kommersant, p. 9).
RETAIL & CONSUMER MARKET
Russian meat producers' profits are being eaten up by retail chains and rising grain prices, officials said at a meeting on livestock farming chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. For now the government plans to address the problem with targeted subsidies of 12 billion rubles, but in future it promises to ban practices where retailers lower prices by just 2-3% when their purchase prices fall 30% (Kommersant, p. 6).
While Russia's federal government is tightening the screws on the alcohol market, regional authorities are loosening them. The share of alcohol excises due to the regions has increased, and they have decided to return some of this money to producers through regional programs to support the industry (Vedomosti, p. 10).
The Industry and Trade Ministry has submitted a strategy for the development of Russia's children's goods industry that will aim to double the market share of domestic goods to 45% by 2020. The strategy calls for the construction of a manufacturing cluster and government funding of 8 billion rubles (Kommersant, p. 9; Vedomosti, p. 19).
Consumers in Russia and the CIS spend more on online games than they do on movie tickets - 40.8 billion rubles in 2012, compared to box office receipts of 39.3 billion rubles in these countries (Vedomosti, p. 11).
REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION
Moscow might offer investors projects to build 31 public transit transfer hubs as early as this summer. In exchange for investing in 250,000 square meters of infrastructure by 2015, developers will be able to build 500,000-700,000 square meters of commercial real estate. Overall investment in the project is estimated at upwards of 60 billion rubles. Potential bidders include Tashir, ADG, RGI and O1 Properties (Kommersant, p. 1).
Rather than pay $160 million to companies controlled by steel tycoon Viktor Rashnikov for the Rossiya hotel, Moscow city hall has decided to give him another hotel, the Renaissance Moscow Olympic (Vedomosti, p. 10).
TELECOMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
The shares of Rostelecom, Russia's national telecommunications provider, tumbled 4.9% to their lowest point in almost a year on Tuesday. Participants in the company's stock options program might be to blame (Vedomosti, p. 11).
AUTOMOTIVE & ENGINEERING
Investment banker Ruben Vardanian has sold his 20.53% stake in Russia's biggest carmaker, Avtovaz to a joint venture between state corporation Rostec and the Renault-Nissan Alliance. The deal could be worth about $600 million (Vedomosti, p. 1).
