Russia will execute privatization plan, but not to detriment of revenues - Shuvalov
MOSCOW. Nov 29 (Interfax) - The Russian government will work to execute its privatization plan, but not to the detriment of revenues derived from it, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said at a Thursday briefing following a government session.
"We have a privatization plan denoted by the budget law. We will work with it in order to execute as much of this plan as possible," he said.
Asked why various figures have been voiced for this year's privatization plan (Economic Development Minister Andrei Belousov previously said that the plan would generate 223 billion rubles in revenue, whereas Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that it would be about 300 billion rubles), Shuvalov said that "this is not a question of discrepancies in our plans."
"We will try to sell several assets by the end of the year. Whether we manage to do that or not, it won't be any tragedy. Nobody is going to just rush to sell," Shuvalov said.
Not every deal is going smoothly. "The competition on global markets is very serious, and we need to sell our assets professionally and at a high price. If the price is good, we will sell. If it's not, we won't sell," he said.
According to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, the government is considering privatization not in the narrow sense of the word, but in a wider sense, since it is thinking about selling companies that are located on the balance sheet not just of the government, but also of the Central Bank (Sberbank of Russia ) and OJSC Russian Railways (RZD) (TransContainer).
