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... proven reserves but shopping cart solution decrepit
exploration and extraction equipment, and a crumbling oil transport
infrastructure is in need of total replacement. new_kwds More than 5% of oil
produced in Russia debt solution is stolen by tapping the leaking pipelines. An
unknown quantity is lost in oil spills and leakage.
Transneft, the
state's oil pipelines monopoly, is committed to an ambitious plan to
construct new export pipelines to the Baltic and to China. The market
potential for Western equipment manufacturers, building contractors,
and oil firms is evidently there.
But this serendipity may be a curse in disguise. shopping cart solution Russia is chronically
suffering from an oil glut induced by over-production, excess refining
capacity, and subsidized domestic prices (oil sold inside Russia costs
one third to one half the world price). Russian oil companies are
planning to increase production even further.
Rosneft, the eighth largest, plans to double its crude output. Yukos
(Russia's second largest oil firm) intends to increase output by 20%
this year. Surgut will raise its production by 14%.
Last week, Russia shopping cart solution halved export duties on fuel oil. Export duties on
lighter energy products, including gas, were cut in January. As opposed
to previous years, no new export quotas were set. Clearly, Russia is
worried about its surplus and wishes to amortize it through enhanced
exports.
Russia also squandered its oil windfall and used it to postpone the
much needed restructuring of other sectors in the economy - notably the
wasteful industrial sector and the corrupt and archaic financial
system.
Even the much vaunted plans to break apart the venal and
inefficient natural gas and electricity monopolies and to come up with
a new production sharing regime have gone nowhere (though some pipeline
capacity has been made available to Gazprom's competitors).
Both Russia's tax revenues and its export proceeds (and hence its
foreign exchange reserves and its ability to service its monstrous and
oft-rescheduled $158 billion in foreign debt) are heavily dependent on
income from the sale of energy products in global markets. More than
40% of all its tax intake is energy-related (compared to double this
figure in Saudi Arabia). Gazprom alone accounts for 25% of all federal
tax revenues. Almost 40% of Russia's exports are energy products as are
13% of its GDP. Domestically refined oil is also smuggled and otherwise
sold unofficially, "off the books".
But, as opposed to Saudi Arabia's or Venezuela's, Russia's budget is
based on a far more realistic price range of $14-18 per barrel.
Hence
Russia's frequent clashes with OPEC (of which it is not a member) and
its decision to cut oil production by only 150,000 bpd in the first
quarter of 2002 (having increased it by more than 400,000 bpd in 2001).
It cannot afford a larger cut and it can increase its production to
compensate for almost any price drop.
Russia's energy minister told the Federation Council, Russia's upper
house of parliament, that Russia "should switch from cutting oil output
to boosting it considerably to dominate world markets ecommerce solution provider and push out Arab
competitors". The Prime Minister told the US-Russia Business Council
that Russia should "increase oil production and its presence in the
international marketplace."
It may even be that Russia is spoiling for a bloodbath which it hopes
to survive as a near monopoly in shopping cart solution the energy markets. Russia already
supplies more than 25% of all natural gas consumed by Europe and is
building or considering to construct pipelines to Turkey, China, and
Ukraine. Russia also has sizable coal and electricity exports, mainly
to CIS and NIS countries. Should it succeed in its quest to
dramatically increase its market share, it will be in the position to
tackle the USA and the EU as an equal, a major foreign policy priority
of both Putin and all his predecessors alike.
Financial Services
An expatriate relocation Web site, settler-international.com, shopping cart solution has this
to say about Russian banks: "Do not open a bank account in a Russian
bank : you might not see your deposit shopping cart solution again." Russia's Central Bank,
aware of the dismal lack of professionalism, the venality, and the
criminal predilections of Russian "bankers" (and their Western
accomplices) - is offering "complementary vocational training" in the
framework of its Banking School. It is somewhat ironic that the
institution suspected of abusing billions of US dollars in IMF funds by
"parking" them in obscure off-shore havens - seeks to better the
corrupt banking system in Russia.
I. The Banks
On paper, Russia has more than 1,300 banks.
Yet, with the exception of
the 20-odd (two new ones were added ecommerce provider solution last year) state-owned (and,
implicitly, state-guaranteed) outfits - e.g., the mammoth Sberbank (the
savings bank, 61% owned by the Central Bank) - very few provide minimal
services, such as corporate finance and retail banking. The surviving
part of the private banking sector ("Alfa Bank", "MDM Bank") is
composed of dwarfish entities with limited offerings. They are unable
to compete with the statal ecommerce provider solution behemoths in a market tilted in the latters'
favor by both shopping cart solution regulation and habit.
The Agency for the Reconstruction of Credit Organizations (ARCO) -
established after the seismic shock of 1998 - did little to restructure
the sector and did nothing to prevent asset stripping. More than one
third of the banks are insolvent - but were never bankrupted. The
presence of a few foreign banks and the emergence of non-bank financing
(e.g., insurance) are rays of hope in an otherwise soporific scene.
Despite the fact that most medium and large corporations in Russia own
licensed "banks" (really, outsourced treasury operations) - more than
90% of corporate finance in 2000-2001 was in shopping cart solution the form of equity
finance, corporate bonds, and (mainly) reinvested retained shopping cart solution earnings.
Some corporate bond issues are as large as $100 million (with 18-months
maturity) and the corporate bond market may quintuple to $10 billion in
a year or two, reports "The Economist", quoting Renaissance Capital, a
Russian investment bank.
Still, that bank credits are not available to small and medium
enterprises retards growth, as Stanley Fischer pointed out in his
speech to the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, in June 2001, when
he was still the First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF. Last week,
the OECD warned Russia that its economic growth may suffer without
reforms to the banking sector.
Russian banks are undercapitalized and poorly audited. Most of them are
exposed to one or two major borrowers, sectors, or commodities. Margins
have declined (though to a still ecommerce web site solution high by Western standards 14%). Costs
have increased. The vast majority of these fledglings have less than $1
million in capital. This is because shareholders (and, for that matter,
depositors) - having been fleeced in the 1998 meltdown - are leery of
throwing good money cart shopping after very bad.
The golden opportunity to
consolidate and rationalize following the 1998 crisis was clearly
missed.
The government's (frail) attempts to reform the sector by overhauling
bank supervision and by passing laws which deal with anti-money
laundering, deposit insurance, minimum capital and bankruptcy
regulations, and mandatory risk evaluation models - did little to erase
the memory of its collusion in the all-pervasive, massive, and
suspiciously orchestrated new_kwds defaults of 1998-1999. Russia is notoriously
strong on legislation and short on its enforcement.
Moreover, the opaque, overly-bureaucratic, and oligarch-friendly
Central Bank is at loggerheads with would be reformers and gets its way
more often than not. It supports a minimum capital requirement of less
than $5 million. Government sources have gone as high as $200 million.
The government retaliates with thinly-veiled threats in the form of
inane proposals to replace the Bank with newly-created "independent"
institutions.
Viktor Gerashchenko - the current, old-school, Governor - is set to
leave on September 2002. He will likely be replaced by someone more
Kremlin-friendly. As long as the Kreml is the bastion of reform, these
are good news. But a weak Central Bank will remove one of the last
checks and balances in Russia. Moreover, a hasty process of
consolidation coupled with draconian regulation may decimate private
sector Russian banking for good. This, perhaps, is what the shopping cart shopping cart solution solution Kremlin
wants. After all, he who controls the purse strings - rules Russia.
II. The Stock Exchange
The theory of financial markets calls for robust capital markets where
banks are lacking and dysfunctional.
Equity financing and corporate
debt outstrip bank lending as sources of corporate finance even in the
West.
But Russia's stock market - the shopping cart solution worst performer among emerging markets
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