Fate of Baikal Pulp & Paper Mill must be decided in next 2 months - Dvorkovich
MOSCOW. Sept 14 (Interfax) - The fate of the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill needs to be decided in the next two months and it will depend on environmental, social, technological and financial issues, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said.
Dvorkovich and Irkutsk Regional Governor Sergei Eroshenko visited the mill and met with its management, the government press service said Friday.
Dvorkovich also led a meeting on the situation at the pulp and paper mill.
While presenting at a conference in the framework of the Baikal Economic Forum on Friday in Ural-Ude, Dvorkovich said that development scenarios for the facility should be drawn up by mid-October. Vnesheconombank and VEB-Engineering, which should present their calculations to the Federal government, are developing the development options.
Dvorkovich said that the main issue to be settled concerns the environment. In addition, a key issue is whether operations to liquidate accumulated wastes at the troubled plant can be technological effective.
Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill was launched in 1966. It has the capacity to turn out around 200,000 tonnes per year. At the end of August 2012, the mill obtained permission from the Natural Resources Ministry to keep discharging wastewater into Baikal until August 16 2013.
There are several options that need to be considered, including modernization or establishing alternative production. Regional authorities and public organizations have on many occasions called for the mill to shut down. The main factor hindering closure is that the mill has a large volume of payables, unresolved problems regarding recycling production waste and the problem of unemployment.
Outside management was introduced at the mill in December 2010 on the initiative of Alfa Bank . At the time creditors were owed 1.7 billion rubles and now the amount exceeds 2.8 billion. Vnesheconombank is willing to refinance around 2 billion rubles worth of payables, if the government determines the fate of the company.
Structures owned by Nikolai Makarov, the former partner of Oleg Deripaska in the timber business, have control over the mill and the Russian Federal State Property Management Agency Rosimushchestvo owns 49%.
