No tricks for businesses that invest at home, Russia's
Siluanov says
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[September 07, 2018]
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Finance
Minister Anton Siluanov called on Russian businesses on Friday to invest
at home instead of abroad and said perceptions the government was
seeking to "trick them" out of their profits were false.
Siluanov's comments came a day after he met business representative
Alexander Shokhin and other heads of companies to discuss ways of
supporting Russian business.
"The relatively stable rouble has allowed business leaders to receive
good earnings. That's why we say: friends, please send these earnings in
the direction of Russia's economy," Siluanov said on Friday.
"Don't guzzle them away. Don't invest them in whatever foreign assets.
Spend them here."
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The minister said that he and Shokhin, a former deputy prime minister
who now heads the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, had
discussed policies to create favorable conditions for business.
"For some reason, (business leaders) think we are trying to confiscate,
to trick them, to take steps to take away their additional profits,"
Siluanov said.
"That's not the case at all. Quite the opposite."
Russian ministers and business leaders are in talks following a proposal
by Kremlin aide Andrei Belousov to raise 500 billion rubles ($7.24
billion) a year for the stretched state budget from metals and mining
firms.
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![](../images/090718pics/busine54.jpg)
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov speaks during a session of
the Moscow Financial Forum in Moscow, Russia September 6, 2018.
REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
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His initial suggestion of a windfall tax on the firms, which the government says
have profited from a weak rouble and strong commodity prices, triggered a
sell-off in metal and mining shares and was opposed by Siluanov. In late August
Belousov proposed instead that firms invest in social projects in Russia.
Russia needs extra budget revenue to meet economic goals set out by Putin when
he began a new six-year term in the Kremlin in May. The government has already
announced plans to raise value-added tax from 2019 and increase the retirement
age.
Moscow has meanwhile adopted or proposed a number of measures to make it easier
for Russian businesses to move their money home, including scrapping penalties
on funds repatriated from abroad.
($1 = 69.1005 rubles)
(Writing by Polina Ivanova; Editing by Catherine Evans)
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