Novye Izvestia
Europe says willing to invest in Russia
Russia is becoming an increasingly attractive investment destination, according to speeches made at the World Investment Conference which opened on Wednesday in La Baule, on the Atlantic coast of France.
Foreign analysts say that half of all large and midsized European companies plan to invest in Russia as soon as global economic growth stabilizes. Russian analysts think it is indeed an attractive investment destination but not always for those whom Russia would like to see or who could contribute to its economic growth.
According to the country-specific attractiveness report presented at the conference by Ernst & Young, Russia was among the top five countries for the number of newly attracted projects in 2009.
"Our surveys in the last few years have shown that Russia is rising," said Marc Lhermitte, a partner at Ernst & Young and a co-author of the report. "It is a big country and it seems an important destination for investment."
He said large and midsized companies were showing an increasing interest in the Russian market.
However, Alexander Abramov, a professor at the stock market and investment department at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, thinks foreign investment prospects are not as positive as foreign analysts say.
"Foreign investors can be divided into three groups: speculators, institutional portfolio investors and direct investors," Abramov said. "What we need most is foreign direct investment, which we can use to import new technology. Through 2007, Russia was one of the world's top five leaders in FDI."
"The trouble is that such investors prefer to channel money into countries with a big domestic market, cheap workforce and other production advantages," the professor said. "Russia is not such a country, as wages have grown considerably in the last few years, its market is not as big as it used to be, and it has no other competitive advantages."
Russia received $13.1 billion in foreign investment in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 9.3% from the previous year. However, foreign direct investment accounted for only 20% of the total, portfolio investment for 2.2%, and the rest (77.8%) was miscellaneous investment.
Miscellaneous investment is less positive because it is usually very short term and is difficult to use for business purposes. At the same time, it increases financial risk, Abramov said.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Lithuania calls Russia an aggressor
On Tuesday, the Lithuanian parliament passed a resolution on Georgia. For the first time an official document by a European state described the August 2008 war in South Ossetia as an act of aggression by Russia and the former autonomies of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as occupied Georgian territories. Recognition of their sovereignty was called a wrongful act.
For Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who began a visit to Romania and France on Wednesday to discuss the "occupation," the resolution came in very handy. Especially in view of the bad feelings created in Europe by a report of the EU Commission on the South Ossetian war.
The adoption of the pro-Georgian resolution by the Lithuanian parliament and the tough wording it used against Russia coincided with the Kampala conference of the International Criminal Court.
It is this organization that is to hear Tbilisi's case against Moscow. Georgia is accusing Russia of armed aggression in the Tskhinvali Region in August 2008. The court also received a counter-claim accusing the Georgian side of unleashing a war in South Ossetia and attempting the genocide of the Ossetian people.
Clearly, the ICC will not take up this case soon because "armed aggression" as such is not within its frame of reference, although it is competent to examine cases connected with such violations related to "armed aggression" as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The Kampala conference is aimed at expanding both the court's competences and its make-up. More accurately, it is an attempt to secure the consent of the United States, China, Russia and India to join the ICC. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon began his speech in the capital of Uganda with a call to all countries "to join the world's first permanent tribunal on war crimes."
In reality, however, the ICC's composition and powers will not be expanded today or tomorrow. Tbilisi, realizing this, still believes that Georgia must be ready for "this expansion to occur any day now" and the Lithuanian parliament's resolution, which contains the terms "aggression" and "occupation of Georgian territories," can play a significant role in Tbilisi's lawsuit against Moscow.
Vedomosti
Cheap but not in high demand
In May 2010, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) surveyed 35 institutional investors, including trusts, pension, equity, hedge and unit funds operating on the Russian stock market..
Sixty-nine percent of those polled have been investing in Russian shares for over a decade. Over 54% of investors believe that Russian shares are currently undervalued, while 65% of those polled plan to spend less on them in the next 12 months.
Another 26% are ready to expand investment, while the rest will retain their current portfolios. At the same time, 47% of market players expect the Russian market to outgrow global markets in the next 12 months.
Eighty-nine percent of respondents say oil prices are the main factor in change on the Russian stock market. Another 80% said global stock market fluctuations are the second most important factor, while 34% of those polled mentioned the ruble's exchange rate.
Forty-nine percent of the respondents cited the consumer market as the most attractive sector of the Russian economy in terms of investment.
Real estate and telecommunications are second and third in line with 43% and 40%, respectively, followed by the energy and oil and gas sectors. The latter two are considered attractive by 34% and 31%, respectively.
Russian energy giant Gazprom, which remains the best blue chip company, is followed by grocery chain Magnit, state-owned Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, and VimpelCom, a leading international provider of telecommunications services.
Although the Russian stock market remains undervalued, investors plan to spend less here. This can be explained by the market's high volatility, primarily in the first five months of 2010, said RBS vice-president Konstantin Orlov. This does not mean that they will stop investing in Russian securities, he added.
Prosperity Capital Management director Lev Prikhodko said investors were unlikely to leave the Russian stock market because of cheap securities and because this move would be pointless.
Western investors are not losing their interest in Russian stocks and bonds, said Oleg Vorotnitsky, head of global equity sales and trading at URALSIB Financial Corporation.
"Naturally, some investors withdrew because the market remained volatile over the past six months. On the whole, their number is insignificant, and I would not say that investment in Russia is being reduced greatly," Vorotnitsky told the paper.
It is logical that the oil and gas sector is the fifth most attractive because investors do not like Russian oil companies very much, Vorotnitsky said. The taxation system allows the state, rather than companies, to profit from oil price hikes, he added.
"It is easier to buy oil futures than the shares of oil and gas companies," Vorotnitsky said.
Rossiiskaya Gazeta
Parents in Russia to be prosecuted for disciplining children and having low income
A package of bills has been submitted to the Russian parliament aimed at providing a legal framework for removing children from families because of poverty and "mistreatment." The parents will be prosecuted for using physical punishment, including light spanking, and other types of "cruelty and neglect."
Russia's Public Chamber even proposed authorizing commissions on juvenile affairs to impose sanctions on families and issue improvement notices. Failure to comply with their orders could lead to removing the child from the family.
The former functions of child protection or guardianship authorities would be delegated to other organizations. Representatives of these public organizations will be authorized to enter homes, inspect families and tell parents how to bring up their children or remove their children to foster care.
Parents would be legally prosecuted for anything the inspector would see as child abuse, including all kinds of punishment, even minor ones, and may face up to three years in prison.
These bills have aroused controversial response in society. Supporters of the new system of family law argue that it is absolutely necessary to punish abusive parents, remove children from "bad" families and place them into "good" ones. Opponents, however, are confident that the new system will crudely interfere in people's private lives, and that the government does not need to replace family, but should rather assist and support it.
Igor Beloborodov, director of the Moscow Institute of Demographic Research, believes that the system of family law applied in the West and now promoted in Russia in fact reduces the birth rate, increases crime (45% of children growing up in children's homes end up in prison) and is essentially in conflict with the Russian demographic policy.
The Russian Inter-Religious Council presidium adopted a joint statement signed by leaders of all mainstream religions present in Russia, which said: "We see as dangerous any measures that will allow state officials to interfere in a family's private life, its lifestyle and philosophy, and the blood ties existing between parents and children. We see these acts, making it legal to remove a child from a family on the basis of vague criteria, which are susceptible to different interpretations, as abuses of freedom."
GZT.RU, Gazeta.ru
Russian grandmother remains in Finland as daughter suffers breakdown
Finnish authorities have postponed the deportation of 82-year-old Irina Antonova. Johan Backman, a Finnish human rights activist, told GZT.RU that the Finnish police cited a lack of vehicles. Meanwhile, Natalia Kaarik, the daughter of the disabled Antonova, unable to endure the long confrontation with the country's authorities, landed in a hospital with a nervous breakdown.
However, Backman did not rule out that the absence of a suitable vehicle was only a story to explain the delay. Earlier, Kaarik had told journalists that dozens of rights activists wanted to gather outside her house to prevent Finland's law enforcers from taking Antonova away.
"They were going to rebel, because deportation of a disabled elderly woman can end in her death, and Finnish doctors made that clear," Backman added.
Later, the police press service reported that Antonova would not be deported until police were satisfied that the Russian woman was able to survive the ordeal. Finnish police chief Mikko Paatero told Finnish journalists that "the first thing to do is to find about Antonova's state of health."
The scandal over deporting the elderly disabled woman erupted at the end of March when Finland's immigration services refused to issue Antonova a residence permit. In 2008, after the 80-year-old Antonova suffered a stroke and became incapable of taking care of herself, Kaarik brought her over from Vyborg to Helsinki. But under Finnish laws, mother and daughter are not considered next of kin, so legally Antonova had no right to live permanently in Finland.
When Antonova's tourist visa expired, the Finnish authorities demanded that the Kaarik family send the disabled person home. The family tried four times to challenge the decision of the Finnish authorities in court, but was refused on each occasion. As a result, the situation was widely covered by both Russian and Finnish media. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Finnish counterpart, Matti Vanhanen, discussed the Kaarik family issue. On Monday, May 31, a thousand people took to the streets of Helsinki to hold a rally in support of the Russian women.
Although Antonova's deportation has been halted, the conflict with the authorities has already been reflected in her daughter's health. She has been admitted to one of Helsinki's clinics.
RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.
MOSCOW, June 3 (RIA Novosti)
