MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) - The first three special economic zones (SEZ) will be opened in Russia this year, the head of the federal agency for SEZs said Monday.
"There are no questions regarding the Tomsk, Moscow or St. Petersburg federal constituencies," Yury Zhdanov said at a presidential meeting on SEZ development. "We have all of the documents to register resident companies and to work on the sites."
Special economic zones are being created across the country to promote the development of high-tech industries and transportation infrastructure through the offering of tax breaks and other privileges to resident companies.
Zhdanov said there would be no favoring of foreign resident companies in SEZs and that the proportion of applications for each economic zone was equally divided between domestic and foreign companies.
President Vladimir Putin voiced concern during the meeting over the large number of foreign companies applying to work in Russia's special economic zones.
"This seems reasonably good, but at the same time there is concern that it could harm the competitiveness of domestic producers," Putin said.
He added that attracting foreign partners to Russia's special economic zones must be used for promoting domestic goods on European and world markets with the goal of developing the Russian economy.
"We need to use them [partners] to promote goods on the European Union and American markets," Putin said. "There are a lot of restrictions there [on the markets], and the talks on free trade were just talks, but in reality everything is closed with no way to access them."
"We need a highly skilled workforce, cheap resources, inexpensive electric energy and relatively inexpensive land, as well as foreign partners to work for the development of the national economy," the president said.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told the president that the government planned to spend 78.8 billion rubles ($2.84 billion) on the development of special economic zones in the next four years.
The law on forming Special Economic Zones came into force January 1, 2006. According to the legislation, the Russian government can establish two types of SEZs, industrial production and technical innovation zones, for a period no longer than 20 years. In SEZ territories, foreign-manufactured goods will be subject to a free customs zone, which means they can be imported and used without customs duties or VAT and without the typical economic restrictions imposed by the Russian Federation.
Russian-manufactured goods in the SEZs will be subject to an export regime that includes excise taxes but no export customs duties. There are also certain benefits under the tax code, the customs code, the land code and other legislative acts.
