The bill has not been signed into a law because of disagreements with the Federal Security Service which considers the blueprint too lenient. The photo shows foreign tourists looking at the Tsar Cannon in the Kremlin in the 1930s.
Photo: ÐÃÀÊÔÄ/Ðîñèíôîðì
| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
Business Strives to Protect Russia’s Sovereignty
The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs suggested barring foreign state-owned companies from investing in Russian strategically important industries. The Kremlin and the government are baffled by the idea. Officials believe it can sour Russia’s image abroad.
On Thursday, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs released a set of proposals for the law regulating foreign investments in strategically important and security-related industries. Russian businessmen asked to make clearer guidelines to help to determine if products of an enterprise have strategic importance. Quite surprisingly, though, the union has offered to bar state-owned foreign companies from buying more than 25 percent in Russian strategic industries. The Union’s president Alexander Shokhin says that overseas state companies “may be pursing not only economic aims but also geopolitical ones” which may run counter to Russian foreign policy.
The Russian Economic Development and Trade Ministry drafted the bill and submitted it to the government in October. It has not been signed into a law yet because of disagreements with the Federal Security Service which considers the blueprint too lenient. The draft has cut the number of strategic industries to seven, leaving on the list only aircraft industry, atomic energy, military industry, natural resources industries and development of state-owned fields.
A Kommersant source in the government says the ministers do not know any state-owned companies that would be willing to work in Russia’s strategic industries. The United States do not have such companies while Europe has only Airbus and EADS. The source believes that members of the Russian business associations may have encountered some problems with their presence on foreign markets connected with misconceptions about Russia. “This looks like a kind of retaliation of the Union’s members for their blunders,” the source said. “I don’t think that this move would benefit the government or Russia’s reputation.”
The government has put off a session to consider the bill from December to the fist half of 2007, the head of the government’s staff Sergey Naryshkin said Thursday.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 22, 2006
|
|
|
