Putin announced the “real” privatization of Rosneft

The state company Rosneft's purchase of 19.5% of its own shares is actually an intermediate step before real privatization, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

This is how he commented on the question of a journalist who said that buying back one's own shares from the state cannot be called full-fledged privatization.

“If this is done, this is like an intermediate step in order to take the next ones - on true privatization, including with the involvement of strategic investors, maybe foreign ones under the control of the state,” Interfax quotes Putin .

Putin confirmed that Russia "will continue to follow the path of real privatization, but not a falling market." He also assured that the Russian budget should receive money from the sale of Rosneft shares in 2016.

Earlier in October, Putin said he did not rule out foreign investors participating in the privatization of the country's largest oil company.

Rosneft vice-president Mikhail Leontiev said that the company is considering buying its shares from Rosneftegaz (a state-owned gold holding that is part of the Federal Property Management Agency and controls Rosneft), as it sees great potential for capitalization growth. Later, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Alexei Ulyukaev, said that the schedule for the privatization of Rosneft does not yet involve the company buying back its shares.

On October 10, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered that a 19.5% stake in Rosneft be privatized before the end of this year.