Tatarstan’s Minster of the Economy Marat Safiullin says the high investment barrier deflects the interest of foreign investors.
Photo: Домбровский Денис Александрович
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Price of Special Economic Zones May Fall
The government of Tatarstan has proposed to the federal government that the investment threshold for entrance into a special economic zones be lowered from €10 million to €3 million. The main beneficiary of the change would be Severstal-Avto, the anchor tenant in the Alabuga special economic zone, which is organizing the production of auto parts for the localization of the assembly of Fiat Ducato cars and Isuzu light trucks. Alabuga, in Tatarstan, is one of the two industrial production special economic zones in Russia. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited it this week. The other industrial production special economic zone in Russia is in Lipetsk.
The expected investment boom in special economic zones has not materialized in three years. The investment barrier was intended to prevent small investors from entering the zones. However, says Tatarstan’s Minster of the Economy Marat Safiullin, the barrier deflects the interest of foreign investors. Now the small investors are seen as desirable neighbors there. In exchange for lowering the investment barrier, the government of Tatarstan will contribute 200 million rubles to the construction of an industrial park for foreign participants in the zone.
Analysts agree that the lowering of the investment barrier is a good idea. “Many interesting projects do not require the investment of €10 million now, but after they start, as a rule, new stimuli for increasing the initial investment appear,” observed Andrey Sharonov, a former official in the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and now a manager at Troika Dialog. He pointed out that the construction of infrastructure at the special economic zones is behind schedule, which is another disincentive to investment.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 30, 2008
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