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Friday, 24 October 2003

FORMER RUSSIAN PRIME MINISTER ELABORATES ON PLAN TO RECONCILE STATE,

Published in News Digest

By empty (10/24/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

In an interview with \"Argumenty i fakty,\" No. 43, former Prime Minister and Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Yevgenii Primakov detailed the so-called Primakov Pact that he proposed earlier as a means of reconciling the oligarchs and the state in the wake of the Yukos investigations. Under the proposal, the state would promise not to revise the results of the 1990s-era privatizations, while the oligarchs would agree to direct more energy-export revenues to state coffers.
In an interview with \"Argumenty i fakty,\" No. 43, former Prime Minister and Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Yevgenii Primakov detailed the so-called Primakov Pact that he proposed earlier as a means of reconciling the oligarchs and the state in the wake of the Yukos investigations. Under the proposal, the state would promise not to revise the results of the 1990s-era privatizations, while the oligarchs would agree to direct more energy-export revenues to state coffers. Primakov told the weekly that he opposes any renationalization in the energy sector, but he thinks the oligarchs should be compelled to share some of their enormous profits. \"In manufacturing, normal profit is about 14 percent,\" Primakov said. \"But in the oil sector, it is 27 percent.\" In the same interview, Primakov said he sees no danger that the possible sale of stakes in oil companies such as Yukos to foreign corporations could lead to foreign control of Russia\'s oil sector. However, he said, it is possible that the money obtained from such sales could be moved abroad rather than invested in the domestic economy. He also said that the expansion of the Russian economy should not be accomplished by boosting energy exports. \"We ourselves need our oil to develop our own economy,\" Primakov said. \"In the Soviet era, we exported 22 percent of extracted oil. Now we export 70 percent.\" (RFE/RL)
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