Dvorkovich: Baikal CBK will have to be closed

Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich believes that the Baikal cellulose-paper plant will most likely have to close, RIA Novosti reports. "There was a lot of conversations, there is a group that is analyzing different options for actions, he said at the International Business Samit. - Most likely, such a plant will have to close such a plant, almost certainly."

In September last year, the then Prime Minister Putin said that Russia cannot suspend production at the Baikal Pulp and Drummer Plant, since its products are necessary, including the domestic missile industry.

He emphasized then that it is necessary to fight for the purity of production, but at the same time one cannot agree with the proposal of some “hot heads”, offering to purchase cellulose abroad. "For the missile industry abroad, no one will sell us with you. It must be understood," Putin said.

In March 2011, the West Baikal Interdistrict Environmental Prosecutor's Office opened two cases of administrative offenses against the Baikal Central Bank. According to the agency, the company dumps into the lake the cows in excess of the standards and does not pay for the negative impact on the environment. According to the head of the environmental prosecutor's office, Alexei Kalinin, "cases were instituted based on the results of the BCC in January of this year."

In January of the same year, the prosecutor’s office and Rosprirodnadzor checked the plant for compliance with environmental legislation and, according to Kalinin, revealed the excess of the average concentrations of pollutants in the wastewater of the BCCs entering the Baikal. According to the suspended substances, the concentration is exceeded 3.8 times, by phenol - 8 times, turpentine - 12 times, aluminum - 1.2 times, lignin - 740 thousand times, hydrogen sulfide - by 173 times, formaldehyde - 2.5 times, oil products - 5.2 times, anion chloride - B. 11.7 times. There was also a similar picture of pollution Rosprirodnadzor and the prosecutor’s office in the summer of 2010, but then there was less than the average concentrations of pollutants, in particular in lignin and cam products.

The fact that the Ministry of Natural Resources would like to close the Baikal cellulose-paper plant in November 2010 by the head of the ministry, Yuri Trutnev. On November 12, the First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov stated that the plant would not be closed, but would be re-profiled. The government planned to use the BCC employees to use in the field of tourism.

The Baikal Central Bank was idle from October 2008 to July 2010. However, in January 2010, Putin signed a resolution allowing the production of paper products without the use of vast water use systems in the ecological zone of Lake Baikal. This made it possible to resume production, but it became unprofitable: the BCC lost the opportunity to make highly reliable white cellulose. The BCBC is now in the external management procedure. The debt of the enterprise is 1.9 billion rubles.