Russia aims to raise 1 trillion roubles ($13.53 billion) from privatisation next year, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview aired on Thursday, signalling a major acceleration of plans to sell state assets.
These plans, ambitious on paper, have largely ground to a halt over the last three years against the background of poor stock market conditions, exacerbated by a plunge in oil prices and Western sanctions linked to the Ukraine conflict.
However, the same negative economic developments also mean that the government is increasingly strapped for cash, giving it an incentive to speed up privatisation as an alternative to raising taxes, cutting spending or exhausting fiscal reserves.
“Next year we will seriously change our approach to privatisation,” Siluanov said in the interview on Rossiya-24 television. “The Russian government is preparing proposals to sell stakes in large companies.”
He added that “in the first instance” the state oil firm Rosneft was being prepared for privatisation. Bashneft , a smaller oil company that was renationalised last year, is also under consideration.
Plans to sell a 19.5 per cent stake in Rosneft were first announced in 2013 and approved by the government a year ago, but progress has been minimal. Rosneft is presently 69.5 per cent state-owned.
While the finance ministry is eager to accelerate privatisation to boost state revenues, opponents – among them Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin – have repeatedly argued that privatisation should be delayed until stock prices are significantly higher.
