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By John Helmer in Moscow
In the milk business, sanctimoniousness can induce more nausea than salmonella.
President Dmitry Medvedev big-noted his re-election campaign with a speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday with this seeming call for competition to stimulate economic growth. “No matter how many state-owned enterprises we might have,” Medvedev said, “modernisation will above all be achieved through the efforts of private business, and only in a competitive environment. The state’s job is to ensure a good business climate for Russian and foreign entrepreneurs, and a fair and honest competitive environment.”
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 21st, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Roughly one rouble in every three spent from the Russian state budget goes out the treasury door in the form of a procurement contract.
According to the statute which regulates this process – Federal Law No. 94-FZ, “On Procurement of Goods, Works and Services for State and Municipal Needs”, enacted in 2006 – the process may take the form of tenders, auctions, or open requests for quotations. What the last of these means in practice is that the procuring government agency sends requests for a price quote to selected contractors. According to the law, this method is restricted to procurements of relatively low value. A report by the Ministry of Economic Development in April of 2009 on the first years of the operation of the procurement law called it “one of the most radical reforms in the second half of the 2000s, which affected many government and private economic agents.”
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 18th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow
It’s tough being the greatest legal reformer ever to occupy the Kremlin because none of the tsars who preceded Dmitry Medvedev had a university degree in jurisprudence. Mikhail Gorbachev might be considered a close runner, because he received his law degree from Moscow State University in 1955. But then Medvedev wouldn’t be the only one among Gorbachev’s successors to deny him the laurel, for fear of attracting the electoral doom he would share with Gorbachev, if he were more generous.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 17th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The dispute that has haunted Evraz’s operation of the Czech steelmill at Vitkovice since 2005 when the Russian group won a disputed privatization tender for the plant, has escalated this week into a threat of closure. It is the second time the Evraz management in Moscow has issued a closure warning in disputes this year outside Russia. The first was in the Ukraine over rivalry for railroad access between Evraz’s Sukha Balka iron-ore mine and Igor Kolomoisky’s Krivoi Rog Iron-Ore Combine (KZhRK) (see http://johnhelmer.net/?p=2680).
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 17th, 2010
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Moscow, 15 June 2010 – UC RUSAL (SEHK: 486, EuroNext: RUSAL/RUAL), the world’s largest aluminium producer, announces the visit of a UC RUSAL delegation headed by Oleg Deripaska, CEO of UC RUSAL, to Guinea. Within the framework of the visit the company and the government of the country reached several agreements.
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by Editor - Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of ports and shipping, Igor Sechin (image of Paris, centre), told Fairplay today he believes the best replacement for the storm-damaged Sochi cargo port is Kavkaz, on the Kerch Strait. Sechin confirmed that last week in Turkey he had spoken in favour of a new cargo hub to service the Sochi Winter Olympics construction, which is planned to require a 6-million tonne annual volume through the port until 2014, when the Games will be held. Through a spokesman Sechin also told Fairplay he believes Sochi should continue to be developed as a passenger port, and that after the Olympics, the cargo facilities should be converted to a marina for luxury vessels.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Russian public companies are special, and public shareholders are the last to know. But when Suleiman Kerimov is engaged in a deal, you can be certain of knowing one thing — nothing is what it seems. The brokerages egging the market on today to buy Uralkali shares at a premium, on the ground that Kerimov has just done so, are misled. The controlling shareholder of Uralkali has just been obliged to sell at a discount.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Russian dockers at St Petersburg and Tuapse are threatening to strike unless the stevedore and port companies employing them accept inflation indexation of their salaries, which is provided by Russia’s labour law, but is not included in their current work contracts. The threat is aimed at Russia’s richest individual, the oligarch Vladimir Lisin (right image).
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 11th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The treasure cave which the legendary Ali Baba found is not known to have had a back-door.
Otherwise, when it happened that Ali’s greedy brother Qassim forgot the ‘Open Sesame!’ for the entrance, he’d have been able to safely escape the arrival of the forty thieves. Instead, Qassim was discovered, and cut into four pieces.
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 11th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow
On Thursday evening in Conakry, the capital of the west African republic of Guinea, presidential advisor Mamadou Conde was dismissed, after he was found to have been involved in a plan to sign over bauxite concession rights to the Russian aluminium monopoly Rusal, and arrange for acting Guinean President Sekouba Konate to endorse the scheme on this week’s planned Moscow trip.
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 11th, 2010
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