Russian retail investors will not get tax breaks for buying foreign securities - deputy finance minister

MOSCOW. Oct 12 (Interfax) - Russia plans to provide tax breaks for individual investment accounts to promote investment in the country's own economy, so they will not be extended to the purchase of foreign companies' securities, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseyev said.

"Exactly right, we will not grant tax breaks under [individual investment accounts] or others for the purchase of securities outside of the Russian Federation or, let's say, foreign issuers, other than those that are placed in Russia. Because we need to foremost channel into investment in the Russian economy and provision of equity capital, which the Russian financial market, it must be said, has never provided in a sufficient amount," Moiseyev said on radio station Moskva FM.

He recalled that in 2020 there was a debate over the law on qualified and unqualified investors and whether unqualified investors should be allowed to buy foreign securities.

"We decided then that they should, because this balances portfolios and, as it seemed at the time, balances risks, but already then it seemed that there are also other risks that we cannot predict now. And life showed that there are. This flow is not completely closed now, some depositories have been hit by sanctions, and some depository infrastructure has not been hit by sanctions. Honestly, I don't like all this and even my colleagues at the Finance Ministry argued that some sort of limit should be kept for unqualified investors. And that's how it is for now," Moiseyev said.