Kudrin opposes draft legislation on development of Siberia, Far East
MOSCOW. April 24 (Interfax) - Former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin opposes the Economic Development Ministry's draft legislation on the development of Siberia and the Far East.
"At first I didn't believe it; I haven't yet seen the draft legislation introduced by the Economic Development Ministry for agreement in other ministries with my own eyes. I can't believe that there can be such a law," Kudrin said while presenting at a discussion of the 'Russian Macroeconomics' series organized by the newspaper Vedomosti.
The proposed draft legislation envisages the creation of a state-owned company for developing Eastern Siberia and the Far East.
Adopting such a law would cause the Russian investment climate to deteriorate, Kudrin said. "The goal that has been set - to transition from 120th to 20th place [in the Doing Business 2012 rating put together by the World Bank] - will immediately be crossed out," he said.
"This would be a deceleration in the development of the Far East and the Transbaikal, because creating such a player that could implement any private project with state-administrative resources from special preferences would mean that any other investor wanting to work in this zone would have a player with special preferences in front of it," Kudrin said.
Introducing such a player on the market would "kill" all private investments in this sector. "This is a simultaneous legalization or legitimization of the model for manual control over the economy; that is, we are ultimately saying that ordinary mechanisms don't work and we need to go along some other path, increasing the role of the subjective factor," he said.
