Page 58 - RusRPTNov18

The government plans to order state-owned companies to only settle contracts in rubles , First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov said on the Russia 24 TV channel.
He recalled that the state can influence state-owned companies through its representatives on the boards of directors. The SOEs will not have to settle the entire contract amount in rubles, but the minister did not say what proportion would have to be settled in rubles.
According to the federal property registry, the state owns shares in more than 1,500 companies and banks. The largest of them, such as Gazprom, Rosneft, VTB , Trasneft and Aeroflot, are managed by the government directly through directives signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev or his deputies. The Directorate for small state-owned companies is prepared by the Federal Property Management Agency together with the sectoral departments.
Siluanov and the Minister of Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin explained that it is not a question of banning the US currency for settlements in Russia. Siluanov clarified saying that the authorities only want to push business to switch to national currencies in the settlement of export transactions. For this, additional tax incentives may be introduced and VAT refunds accelerated for ruble settled deals. According to the minister, there are no plans for the dollar deposits of the population to be converted into ruble ones.
De-dollarization does not imply refusal of the dollar, CEO of Russia’s VTB bank Anderi Kostin said on Sunday. "Several words have been said about the refusal of the dollar. I would like to say that, first, no one is speaking about the refusal of the dollar. Moreover, the so-called de-dollarization program does not envisage any restrictive, the more so, prohibitive measures in respect of the dollar neither for people nor for corporations," he told the Tolstoy. Sunday program on the Rossiye-1 television channel.
A package of measures aimed at lowering Russia's dependency on US dollar has been prepared by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), the Finance Ministry, and the Ministry of Economic Development, the head of the latter Maxim Oreshkin told the press on October 3.
"These are stimulating measures that make such [non-dollar] operations more effective, simple, and comfortable for the companies," Oreshkin is cited as saying. He added that such measures have already been implemented with China and other countries that will increase the volume of mutual transactions in national currencies.
A ban on using US dollar for Russian state banks is one of the "nuclear" sanction options introduced to the US Congress. Both China and Russia, along with several other countries, are actively working now to end the dollar’s dominance as the currency of choice for international settlements and trade in a process that is likely to last for decades. Recent reports suggested that state bank VTB and major oil company Surgut are bracing for dollar-related limitations, while the CBR had to verbally intervene to claim it has enough foreign currency liquidity to absorb any shocks.
Reportedly the plan on limiting the dollar transaction was first proposed by the head of VTB Bank Andrei Kostin. However, Kommersant d aily reported that
58 RUSSIA Country Report November 2018 www.intellinews.com