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Bidders for Investment Fund Money to Be Ranked
At today’s meeting of the government, Russia’s Regional Development Ministry will suggest revising procedures for spending the Investment Fund’s money. The proposal is to rank investment projects submitted for government’s funding, setting new financial priorities each year. This year’s highlights are wood and fish-processing industries, small aircraft and public water supply of high quality.
Regional Development Ministry will have to start today with a progress report on investing activities of other authority, the RF Economic Development and Trade Ministry, which was stripped of the Investment Fund straight after September 2007 resignation of German Gref. The results will be hardly assessed as successful.
The crucial problem of the fund is that most of its projects are mere elaboration of feasibility studies for future grand construction undertakings. Their initiators will need money for actual construction one day, but the fund’s deficit might exceed 600 billion rubles by 2016 despite that Finance Ministry agreed to annually add 100 billion rubles to its clear balance of 175 billion.
Another problem of the fund, a source with the government specified, is that the projects are being approved when available without being rated in view of priority. Exactly this practice has been recently criticized by President Vladimir Putin and Regional Development Minister Dmitry Kozak will endeavor to change it today.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 07, 2008
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