| Political scientist Joseph Diskin voiced a new version of public-private partnership Over the past year, the economy has been stumbling at every turn. It is already clear that neither high oil prices nor other factors will be able to ensure economic growth next year even at the current level. At the same time, no one is removing the task of doubling GDP.
Against this background, the idea of the state influencing investors by its own example, by directly investing state money in the Russian economy, is increasingly taking hold of the minds of people trying to influence the opinions of officials. The logic is simple: private investors, having looked at the state, will understand that it is not at all scary to invest money in today's Russian economy, where any private property can be taken away from the owner at any moment. In the government, this idea is floating around under the name “public-private partnership.”
As Minister of Economic Development German Gref said at the last government meeting last Wednesday, the main source of investment development for Russian regions should be public-private partnerships and concession agreements. “In developed countries, up to 40% of investments, for example, in road infrastructure are attracted from the market through public-private partnerships,” he explained. True, before you start spending, you need to “first eliminate the chaos in your minds regarding where and how this money should be spent,” Mr. Gref noted.
At the very time when the minister was trying to convince his colleagues in the White House of the need for reasonable government participation in the economy, political scientist Joseph Diskin, one of the authors of the sensational report “State and Oligarchy,” told reporters about a completely different way of spending the all-Russian nest egg. It is worth recalling that it was last year's report "State and Oligarchy", as many believe, that served as the ideological basis for the destruction of YUKOS. The problem of the secret influence of oligarchs, in the opinion of the political scientist, can already be removed from the agenda. However, he discovered a new, no less global challenge of the time. “They talk a lot about business’s distrust of the state,” Mr. Diskin believes, “but the scale of the state’s own distrust of business is even greater.” The political scientist believes that this unsightly phenomenon should be combated with the help of special technologies.
Mr. Diskin is ready to offer one of them right now. The state must demonstrate its loyalty to business by investing money from the Pension and Stabilization Funds in it. But, and this is Mr. Diskin’s know-how, one should invest not in the enterprises themselves, but in the stock market. That is, according to the political scientist, the state needs to spend money from the stabilization fund to purchase shares of enterprises selected according to special criteria. For example, if there are investment ratings and there are no claims from the tax authorities. At the same time, he seems to forget that in Russia there are companies with investment ratings, against which the state makes tax claims (for example, VimpelCom).
Mr. Diskin is convinced that this measure will not only help save accumulated money from inflation, but also become an additional shield from the tax authorities. “Knowing that public money has been invested in the enterprise, tax officials will think five times whether their actions should reduce its capitalization,” explained the political scientist.
In this way, the state will protect business from itself. Unfortunately, it remains not entirely clear who and how will play on the stock exchange on behalf of the state. And why is this path less corrupt than investing stabilization fund money in infrastructure projects, which the Ministry of Finance is now leaning towards, following the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.
But it is known who should be interested in Mr. Diskin's proposal. As he put it, “the person most interested in stabilizing the situation in the country.” That is, President Vladimir Putin. Vera SITNINA |
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