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appealing to the government because, although it bears an additional one-off expense, it has the potential to recoup the funds through future dividend payments, while keeping Gazprom’s debt burden in check. Still, we think that the likelihood of a share placement is low. We note that the company has already started to finance the gasification programme by raising perpetual bonds.
Current financing setup. According to previous reports (see our Morning Comment of 16 February), the cost of social gasification is estimated at RUB 2tn (USD 26bn) for the next ten years. Of this, RUB 1.1tn is to be contributed by Gazprom itself, with around RUB 0.1tn to come from a special adjustment made by the regional authorities of up to 35% of the gas distribution tariffs and RUB 0.1-0.2tn might come from optimisation. This leaves RUB 500-600bn unfinanced, and the sources for it have yet to be found.
9.1.2 Automotive sector news
Russia’s sales of new light cars and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) rose 0.8% on the year to 120,081 units in February, the Association of European Businesses (AEB) said on March 4, reports Prime.
In January–February, sales of new cars and LCVs decreased 1.4% to 215,294 vehicles.
Sales of Lada cars of Russia’s largest carmaker AvtoVAZ increased by 13% to 28,272 vehicles in February and by 7% to 50,129 vehicles in January– February.
“After slight decrease in the first month of this year, the February new vehicle sales of 120,081 units show again a slight increase versus same month of the previous year. This seems to be a sign of continuous stabilization followed by a further recovery month,” Thomas Staertzel, chairman of the AEB Automobile Manufacturers Committee, said as quoted by the AEB and cited by Prime.
“In general, the market remains at the last year’s level as the AMC announced at the recent press conference. March will provide a more accurate picture with sales data from all the reporting brands,” the executive said.
Manufacturing of small electric cars Zetta in Russia will start in 2021,
Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said on Friday. "They will start production until the end of the year. Everything depends on when the engineering and assembly works are completed," the minister said. In September 2020, Zetta CEO Denis Shchurovsky said that the company postponed the launch past 2020 because the Industrial Development Fund did not provide a cheap 100 million ruble loan. An official of the Industry and Trade Ministry said that the ministry had provided a subsidy of an undisclosed
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