Russia to Lease its Unused Farmland to Asian States

Mar. 20 – Russia may officially welcome Asian nations to lease its abandoned Far Eastern farmland at the APEC summit in Vladivostok this upcoming September.

“Since last year, we’ve been preparing a strategy to develop Russia’s Far East and east-west Siberia to announce at the APEC summit. We have 20 agricultural investment items to offer to Asia-Pacific countries,” Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach told reporters. Some of these projects include up to 150,000–200,000 hectares.

For now, an area for lease includes the Primorsky Krai, Amur and Khabarovsk regions of the Russian Far East, where only half of the farmland is cultivated since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Read the rest of this entry »

Miners in Tyva Republic to Subsidize Reindeer Breeding

Mar. 15 – The government of Siberia’s Tyva Republic has asked foreign and domestic miners operating in the region to pay subsidies to local reindeer breeders, according to the republic’s web site.

Under the agreement, China’s Longxing and the local Golevskaya Mining Company will allocate 600 rubles (US$20) for the maintenance of each reindeer in the Todzhinsky District of Tyva, where both companies operate and where 77 percent of the region’s reindeer population is located. The funds will go to the district’s reindeer breeding farms. Read the rest of this entry »

The Republic of Tuva and the State of Russian Coal Exports

Mar. 14 – Russia’s US$8 billion investment into Siberia to develop the Tyva Ulug-Khem Coal Basin, estimated to have 2.5 times more reserves than the Mongolian Tavan Tolgoi field, could double the country’s metallurgical coal exports by 2020.

“Annual coal production in Tyva may reach 40 million metric tons in 2020 should all the companies implement the announced plans in full,” Dmitry Sakhno, project manager at OAO Severstal, Russia’s second- largest steel producer, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

At the same time, according to Sakhno, the delays by some of the mining companies as well as complexity’s of developing the region may curb production by 2020 to 15 million to 20 million tons. Read the rest of this entry »

French Vostok to Become Pioneer in Russian Electricity Market

Feb. 29 – French grid company Vostok has been contracted to run the Tomsk Distribution Company of Russia’s grid firm MRSK for an initial 18-month probationary period, the companies announced on Tuesday. It’s the first time a foreign entity has been permitted to manage an operating entity in Russia.

“This is the first instance of such cooperation with Western partners. The French party has made the right decision by choosing Siberia for its operations,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin noted.

Tomsk is a city in the southwest edge of the great Siberian Taiga, the administrative center of Tomsk Region, located about 3,500 kilometers from Moscow. Read the rest of this entry »

Sberbank to Buy Austria’s Volksbank

Feb. 16 – OAO Sberbank closed a US$661 million deal to buy the international arm of Austria’s Volksbank International AG (VBI) on Wednesday.

The Volksbank acquisition will serve as a springboard for further expansion in Europe, RIA Novosti quoted Sberbank CEO German Gref as saying in Moscow.

Russia’s biggest lender bought VBI from Oesterreichische Volksbanken AG, which owned 51 percent of VBI, while France’s Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne and Germany’s DZ Bank/WGZ Bank own 24.5 percent and Groupe BPCE owns the remaining 24.5 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

Russian Gold Production Increases, but Fails to Meet Expectations

Feb. 6 – Russian gold production rose 3.6 percent year-on-year in 2011 to 209 metric tons, but below an earlier forecast, data published on Wednesday by the Gold Industrialists’ Union industry lobby showed.

The union expected Russia to produce 211 tons of gold last year – up from 202 tons in 2010 – of which 185 tons was expected to be mined.

Despite missing expectations, Russia, whose reserves are second only to South Africa’s, managed to return to positive growth after annual output declined by 1.4 percent in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

Investors Come Back to Russia

Jan. 16 – Russia-focused equity funds attracted US$43 million of inflows in the week to January, 11, equaling about 0.4 percent of the total amount under management, UralSib Financial Corp. said in a report, citing EPFR Global Data.

“This is the first week of positive flows in the last eight,” UralSib analyst Slava Smolyaninov said in a report. Read the rest of this entry »

Sino-Russian ‘Bad Dates’ and Chinese Relations with ‘Abandonment Child’ of Moscow

By Marina Romanova

Sino-Russian series of bad dates
Chinese-American international energy consultant Edward Chow once said that the Russian-Chinese energy relationship isn’t a marriage, but rather “a series of bad dates.” As far as their energy relationship goes – also keeping in mind the two rather extreme types of relationship of ‘honeymoon’ (1950s) and ‘divorce’ (1960s and 1970s) between Beijing and Moscow – the whole Sino-Russian strategic partner can be described with this kind of metaphor.

Chinese businessmen and bureaucrats are playing a part in almost every Russian investment round-table and economic forum. And it wouldn’t be too much to say that almost every presentation by Chinese participants contains some words about Russia’s “investment unattractiveness” as one of the main reasons not to invest in the Russian economy. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran, Russia to Replace Dollar with Rial, Ruble in Trade

Jan. 10 – Iran and Russia have replaced the U.S. dollar with their national currencies in bilateral trade, Iran’s Fars News Agency reports, citing Seyed Reza Sajjadi, Tehran’s Ambassador to Moscow.

Speaking to Fars, Sajjadi said that the proposal for replacing the U.S. dollar was raised by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Astana on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting June, 2011. Read the rest of this entry »

Toyota Corp. to Open Dealerships in Far East Russia by Next Summer

Dec. 23 – Toyota Motor Corp. plans to open new authorized dealer’s centers in the Far East Russian cities of Khabarovsk, Vladivostok and Nakhodka by summer of 2012, President of Toyota Motors Russia Takeshi Isogaya said in a statement released to the press.

Dealer’s centers would be established in concentrated areas within the cities already receiving Japanese investment. Read the rest of this entry »

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