The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is lending $32.5 million to a local subsidiary of Turkey’s Anadolu Cam group to build a bottling plant near the city of Ufa in central Russia.
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In an important development for its lending programme in its biggest country of operations, the EBRD has launched a landmark five-year rouble bond issue to raise local currency that will be used to provide long-term project loans without exchange risk to the real sector of the Russian economy.
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The International Monetary Fund on Friday criticized the government's plan to spend oil revenues on welfare, urging it to focus on measures to combat inflation and improve the investment climate.
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MOSCOW, Russia still hopes to complete negotiations on joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) by December, Maxim Medvedkov, director of the Trade Negotiations Department of Russia’s Economic Development and Trade Ministry, said Thursday at a meeting of the Mercury business club.
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MOSCOW — Agreement between Russia and the Paris Club envisages all creditors from the club refraining from the conversion of Russia's debts into securities for 18 months, finance minister Alexey Kudrin has told reporters. Therefore, the creditors would refrain from issuing bonds, tied to Russia's debts, and would not sell these debts to other countries, the minister explained. In the future, creditors from the Paris Club will be awaiting Russia's new proposals on repaying its debts ahead of schedule. If such proposals were received, the moratorium on the debt's conversion into bonds would be extended for six more months.
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KIEV — Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko has issued a decree blaming the government which provoked a fuel crisis in the country, by trying to fix petrol prices.
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BRUSSELS Peter Mandelson, the European Union's trade commissioner, on Tuesday called for China to curb exports of two important textile products immediately, amid startling evidence that surging exports from the world's most powerful emerging economy are severely undermining the European textile industry.
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Presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov said Thursday that the onslaught against Yukos, which culminated this week in the conviction of its former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, had caused the country immeasurable harm and was changing the country's economic and political landscape.
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MOSCOW — Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin is not giving up on cutting value-added tax (VAT).
"The idea still needs to be worked out, but we will implement it some day. I can confirm that," Kudrin told the Tax Reform: Analysis and Prospects conference of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
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MOSCOW — The economy ministry of Russia has decreased its forecast for capital-investment growth from 10 percent to 9.5 percent for 2005, and from 11 percent to 9.8 percent for 2006, a source in the ministry has reported. The source has said that the ministry had cut its forecasts for capital-investment growth for 2007 and 2008 as well, which are now rated at 9.1percent and 9.3 percent respectively.
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MOSCOW — Russia raised export tariffs for crude oil and petroleum today. The crude tariff increases by 32%, from $102.6 that was effective since April 1 to a record $136.2 per tonne.
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MOSCOW, The Russian government has ruled to include its 31% stake in the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant and 60% stake in the Stupino Machinery plant to the privatization list for 2005, the government‘s press service said Thursday.
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Russia does not plan to enter either the European Union or NATO, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday, speaking in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
“I do not think we need join them, because Russia can independently claim to be a player in world affairs,“ he said.
Russia should develop its relationship with the EU and NATO as partners, he said.
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MOSCOW, A preliminary glance at Russia’s extravagant May 9 Victory Day celebrations produces the image of a smash hit for the Kremlin. Digging slightly deeper, however, and one finds a Kremlin foreign policy that is struggling to balance the growing pressure from Europe and the U.S. against the desire to maintain the appearance of strength and independence from the West.
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