MOSCOW, April 19 (RIA Novosti) U.S. State Department interferes in Gazprom's affairs/Kazakhstan shoots down the idea of a Eurasec Customs Union/Russia wants to connect Siberia to Alaska by railway tunnel/Russian banking market sees biggest transaction/Russians do not believe in tax amnesty
Gazeta
U.S. State Department interferes in Gazprom's affairs
Worried about the active expansion of the Russian state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom on the European energy market, Washington has lashed out at the company.
Matthew Bryza, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, expressed doubts about Gazprom's ability to ensure undisrupted supplies of natural gas to third countries over the next few years.
The company is focusing on acquiring parts of the European gas infrastructure instead of making vital investment to ensure the reliability of Russian exports, he said.
Gazprom's representatives did not comment on the statement.
Independent Russian experts partially agree with the U.S. official. Vladimir Milov, president of the Institute of Energy Policies, said: "Investment in assets in adjoining spheres will further damage the company's core business, which already has serious problems."
According to the Institute's estimates, in 2003-2005 Gazprom spent as much as $18 billion on acquisitions not related to gas production, which is more than its investment in development of its core business in recent decades.
Almost nothing has been spent to ease bottlenecks in the gas transportation system, notably on the border of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, Russia's main gas producing region, Milov said.
"At the same time, the company's gas production has stagnated," he said. "Experts have repeatedly voiced concerns that this stagnation would soon turn into a plunge."
Production at Gazprom's biggest field will plummet by 150 billion cubic meters of gas a year within the next 10 years, he said. "Putting on stream large new fields will only make up for the falling output of existing fields," he said.
Last year, Gazprom's export arm, Gazexport, supplied about 140 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe, which accounted for about 26% of Europe's total consumption and for 40% of its imports.
Kommersant
Kazakhstan shoots down the idea of a Eurasec Customs Union
Yesterday, during a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Community (Eurasec) intergovernmental council of prime ministers in Astana, Belarus and Kazakhstan ganged up on Russia.
Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov supported Belarus' suggestion that the organization's member countries coordinate their energy policy and proposed postponing the establishment of a Eurasec Customs Union until all member countries had entered the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Kazakhstan thereby doomed the organization's only big project, which Russia has been working on for more than a year.
The Kazakh prime minister said that "the parties have failed to agree on the regulatory background for the project and its coordination in relation to entering the WTO."
Masimov suggested that Eurasec, which comprises Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, should wait to create a Customs Union until all its potential participants had gained access to the WTO.
Now, he said, the countries should make preparations to establish a Customs Union.
Russia and Kazakhstan may enter the WTO in 2008, but Belarus presumably has no chance to do so in the foreseeable future.
According to Kommersant sources, Kazakhstan's criticism was caused by the failure of negotiations with Russia on transporting Kazakh oil through Transneft pipelines to the EU.
Two weeks ago, Masimov held talks with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and Polish President Lech Kaczynski.
The Polish leader offered for the Kazakh prime minister to take part in the completion of the Odessa-Brody-Plotsk pipeline, but Kazakhstan, which did not guarantee Poland that it would participate in the project, did not receive any concessions from Fradkov.
This was presumably the cause of Russia's difficulties with Eurasec as a whole.
Talks on establishing a Customs Union will continue in May, but the chances of success are dwindling quickly; Belarus and Kazakhstan have now become Russia's opponents.
Vedomosti
Russia wants to connect Siberia to Alaska by railway tunnel
The number of state-financed projects is growing, and so is their scale. Next week, participants at a conference titled "Megaprojects in East Russia" will sign an address to the governments of Russia, the United States and Canada asking them to support the construction of a tunnel under the Bering Strait.
Experts, however, warn that it would cost $65 billion and would not pay off for 30 years.
A French engineer suggested to the Russian government that it build a tunnel there in 1905. The idea did not gain support then, but now the feasibility study of the project is being drafted by the Council for Production Forces Studies under the Russian Economic Development and Trade Ministry and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The transcontinental railway Eurasia - America would run 6,000 kilometers (3,750 miles) across Russian territory and would consist of three branches, Berkakit-Yakutsk, Yakutsk - Magadan and Magadan - Uelen (Chukotka).
The continents would be connected by a 100-110-kilometer (60-mile) railway tunnel, the construction of which would take 15-20 years.
The Council estimates that the project would pay off in 30 years, after reaching a projected cargo capacity of 70 million metric tons a year. That is comparable to the capacity of the Panama and Suez Canals.
The railway would provide access to hydropower resources of the Far East and the northwest of the United States, allowing for the construction of power grids and a cable crossover across the strait, connecting the two countries' generation systems.
The transport corridor would carry 3% of the world's cargo. The annual growth of global GDP would be 0.3% and trade turnover would be $300-$350 billion, said the Council's deputy chairman Viktor Razbegin.
So far, officials are trying to decide who would finance the project and its cost sheet, said Maksim Bystrov, deputy head of the Federal Agency for Management of Special Economic Zones.
The tunnel could be given in a concession, he said. The Transport Ministry supports the idea, but has not studied it thoroughly yet, said its representative Timur Khikmatov.
Bulat Stolyarov, director of the Institute of Regional Politics, said that no one would build this corridor in the near future.
Current investment projects that are carried out with state support envisage that infrastructure is built for 10-15 industrial facilities. In this case, there is not enough business interest for the short-term, he said.
Ivan Shatskikh, CEO of UPS RUS, thought that the news that the Bering Strait would carry as much cargo as the Suez Canal was a joke.
Gazeta.ru\Kommersant
Russian banking market sees biggest transaction
The Belgian banking and insurance group KBC will buy Russia's Absolut Bank. The buyer is willing to pay over $1 billion for 100% ownership. No foreign investor has paid such a sum for a Russian bank in one tranche so far.
KBC, which left the Russian market seven years ago, is now ready to return. It estimates Absolut to be worth $1.03 billion.
The transaction is to be completed in the third quarter 2007. However, an agreement has been reached for only 92.5% of its shares so far. It is unknown whether the International Finance Corporation will agree to sell its 7.5% stake.
Absolut has spent over a year looking for a buyer. Its chairman of the board, Nikolai Sidorov, said they had received various proposals. One of the candidates was Greece's largest bank, the National Bank of Greece.
"The bank's own capital equaled $270 million at the beginning of the year, which means that the price is being offered with a 3.8 ratio to capital," said Denis Mukhin, an analyst with Broker Credit Service. Polina Lazich of Ak Bars Finance said it was 3.9.
Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, is now traded at a ratio of 3.2. The country's number two bank, VTB, may raise capital with a ratio of 2 during the forthcoming IPO, analysts said.
The record in this respect was set by the City Mortgage Bank, which Morgan Stanley estimated with a ratio of 5.
For the Russian banking market, the transaction means that there will be fewer unsold banks left.
On the other hand, demand for them remains high, which is proved by the statement of Austrian Raiffeisen International's CEO Herbert Stepic, who said Wednesday that interest in the region was growing and that large European and American banks were prepared to buy assets on the emerging European and Russian markets.
That means that the price of Russian banks will increase.
"Greater interest makes banks estimate their businesses higher," Mukhin said. "It is especially true of those that are developing retail, where we have a high growth potential."
Vedomosti
Russians do not believe in tax amnesty
The government's proposal that people legalize their hidden incomes has not been well received so far. After the first month of the tax amnesty, the budget brought in a mere 57 million rubles (about $2.2 million).
The amnesty was announced a month ago and will last until January 1, 2008. To legalize their earlier concealed incomes, received before January 1, 2006, people are being allowed to transfer 13% of the sum to the treasury via any bank.
The payment will be equaled to the income tax, and even to the social tax for individual entrepreneurs. People convicted of tax evasion cannot apply for amnesty.
However, people don't seem to be in any hurry to declare their incomes.
The treasury has so far received 56,981,769.20 rubles ($2 million), said a source close to the Kremlin administration. That means that as much as 438.3 million rubles ($16 million) have been legalized.
The largest transfers came from Moscow (17.9 million rubles), the Stavropol Territory (13.1 million), the Moscow Region (3.6 million), the Krasnodar Territory (3.2 million) and the Ryazan Region (2.8 million).
In St. Petersburg, people have paid 205,257 rubles. The smallest amount has been transferred from the Omsk Region, 100 rubles (this means that someone has legalized 769.2 rubles).
Some people decided to legalize incomes that are not subject to obligatory taxation. The total number of people who have made payments is unknown.
"The goal of the amnesty is not to bring additional money [into the budget]," the source said. "It is important that [President] Vladimir Putin has given people the opportunity to legalize their incomes before the end of his term in office." He said even 57 million rubles was a positive result.
There has been no information coverage of the amnesty. Dmitry Badovsky of the Institute of Social Systems, said that the results were not spectacular, but the state had not explained the principles of the amnesty to the population.
The source in the administration said that the advertising campaign was being discussed, but its concept was not ready yet. Proposals include both information boards in banks and a TV campaign.
However, ads may not help if taxpayers are scared by political risks related to the change of power in the country, Badovsky said.
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