"This has helped the Natural Resources Ministry to enhance transparency in distributing rights to the use of minerals and inspired business to make arrangements for participation in such auctions in advance," says the report.
December 2004 saw the completion of the work over the edited law On the Subsoil whose concept had been approved by the Russian government still earlier, in 2002. It introduced a transition to the use of the subsoil on the basis of civil law. This legislation lays down in clear-cut statements all the rights and duties of both the government and minerals users and serves to enhance the transparency of state regulation of minerals use and its investment attractiveness.
Other innovative features are using only auctions for giving rights to nature use and allocating licenses granting the discoverer of a deposit the right to develop it.
Th legislation also spells out all unambiguous criteria for recalling government licenses or severing contracts, introduces a free turnover of the rights to minerals use, lays down the ownership right to geological information and rules of its exposure and transfer to private hands.
The government session last November approved the long-term governmental program for Russia's subsoil exploration and mineral resources reproduction for a period until 2020, worked out by the Natural Resources Ministry and the federal agency for subsoil use.
Under the government-endorsed variant, the government is to invest in geological prospecting over 255 billion rubles ($1 equals 27.78 rubles) and private companies over two trillion rubles during the period of 2005 to 2020.
"This long-term program is meant to remove theimbalance between the extraction of mineral resources and their reproduction. The Russian Federation will be able not only to reach the level of simple reproduction (extraction equals increment in resources) but to build up our stock of strategic mineral resources, such as natural gas, diamonds, gold, uranium and others," says the report.
