Privatization in Russia

[Dan Bell <dbell@kent.edu>]

Russian PM says no going back on privatisation
  
MOSCOW, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Russia's privatisation process, widely criticised 
for putting some of the country's best assets in the hands of a few 
well-connected insiders, cannot be reversed, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin 
said on Monday. 

"There can be no question of deprivatisation or redistribution of property," 
RIA news agency quoted Putin as telling a conference on state property 
management. 

But the 47-year-old premier said that in certain situations there could be "a 
civilised change of ownership." 

Putin was speaking against a background of several bitter disputes over 
ownership of former state enterprises and ahead of a December 19 
parliamentary election in which some candidates have questioned the legality 
of past sell-offs. 

Former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, a leader of the centrist 
Fatherland-All Russia movement, separately said on Monday that privatisation 
of certain enterprises should be reviewed, but without turning back the clock 
to the Soviet past. 

"If a privatised enterprise is worth it, if its resources are being stolen by 
new owners, the workers being driven out... and it is discovered that 
privatisation was not carried out correctly, if it was illegal, then we will 
review it retrospectively," Interfax agency quoted Primakov as saying. 

Russia's mass privatisation programme in the early to mid-1990s dismantled 
the centralised Soviet economy and led to the sale of tens of thousands of 
state enterprises. 

But some of the biggest firms, including oil and metals producers, were sold 
cheaply in so-called shares-for-loans deals to a small group of bankers and 
businessmen. 

Other privatisations have also been criticised for being carried out too 
hastily without netting the budget its due. 

Putin said "individual approaches" should be used to resolve disputes such as 
those which erupted recently at the Vyborg pulp and paper mill and at the 
Lomonosov porcelain factory. 

Workers at the Vyborg mill have locked out the plant's British owners despite 
attempts by bailiffs to enforce their rights, while an appeal is pending on a 
court ruling that the 1993 privatisation of the Lomonosov factory was 
illegal.
--
Dan Bell
International Program Coordinator
Ohio Employee Ownership Center
Kent State University
Kent, OH 44242
(330) 672-3028
(330) 672-4063 fax
dbell@kent.edu
http://www.kent.edu/oeoc/