Translated material
There's nothing to complain about
Russian officials kindly rejected all proposals from foreign investors
At the first meeting of the permanent committee of the Foreign Investment Advisory Council (FIAC) this year, the most difficult aspects of foreign businessmen's stay in Russia were discussed yesterday: from the adoption of a law on access to strategic sectors of the economy to the size of advertising blocks on television. Despite the emphasized attention to the speeches of foreigners and squabbles between representatives of various departments on the topic of who exactly is hindering the adoption of correct decisions, almost all the proposals of foreign investors, for one reason or another, remained good wishes.The list of issues stuck in the FIAC working groups exceeded a dozen. True, Minister of Economic Development German Gref consoled those gathered , discussing the issue here means a “black mark.” Ideally, all disagreements should be resolved in a working manner, and once a year at the FIAC meeting, achievements should simply be recorded.
FIAC is a body where foreign companies operating in Russia can directly address their problems to members of the government. It meets in full once a year, and the standing committee meets twice. Communication with this category of businessmen is, on the one hand, very pleasant for officials. By the very fact of their presence they prove that in Russia everything is fine with the investment climate. On the other hand, investors do not demand an abstract fight against bureaucracy, but the adoption of specific legislative acts and strict compliance with the law. And with this, things are clearly worse.
Behind many Russian laws are such influential lobbying forces that there is no possibility of adopting them, not just taking into account the wishes of foreign investors, but in any form at all. For example, the law on subsoil , the development of which has been going on almost since the beginning of the 21st century. “We were informed that it will not be adopted in the near future, and changes in legislation will occur through amendments to the current law,” said Stig Horvik, vice president of ExxonMobil Russia.
According to FIAC members, the previously prepared law provided significant benefits for Russia in terms of attracting and controlling investments, but now there are real fears that after the amendments, the adoption of a new law will no longer be considered necessary, and management reform in subsoil use will never happen . Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Alexey Varlamov, looking up (clearly in the direction of the Kremlin), explained the impossibility of passing the law by “political will.”
Or take the law on access of foreigners to strategic industries. The commercial director of Siemens in Russia, Michael Axmann, made a proposal to regularly inform foreign investors about the progress of its consideration. Deputy Minister of Industry and Energy Ivan Materov immediately kindly informed Mr. Axmann that there were three possible lists of activities to which foreigners would be denied access. To the “basic” version of the Ministry of Energy, the FSB wants to add another three dozen types of activities, and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, on the contrary, wants to remove half. On his own behalf, Mr. Materov expressed hope that the head of the conciliation commission, Sergei Naryshkin, would still choose their option. German Gref said that it would be better to do without their amendments, but the main thing is that without the amendments of the FSB. However, since security officers were not present at the meeting, the prospects for the adoption of the law remain vague.
In addition, Mr. Axmann suggested thinking about guarantees for investments already made. At this point it became obvious to any observer how difficult it would be to help foreigners in this matter.
The head of the Russian representative office of Mars, Richard Smythe, also suffered a fiasco, protesting against the introduction of amendments to the advertising law from January 1 next year, which will reduce advertising breaks on television channels from 12 to nine minutes per hour. According to his calculations, this will lead to such an increase in its value, and therefore an inevitable increase in prices, that inflation due to this measure alone will amount to one and a half percent. However, Deputy Head of the FAS Andrei Kashevarov said that his department has also calculated everything, and the growth of inflation will not exceed 0.2%, that is, it will fall within the statistical error. In general, an increase in advertising prices will have a greater impact on domestic companies. So there's nothing to complain about.