MOSCOW, February 3. /TASS/. Russia’s Economic Development Minister Alexey Ulyukayev has invited Austrian business to take part in privatization of Russian assets.
He said this when talking to reporters after a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister for Science, Research and Economy of Austria Reinhold Mitterlehner.
"We just touched [upon this issue - TASS]. I told him about the opportunities this plan contains, that we are optimizing our privatization activities this year and will offer attractive assets. I invited Austrian businesses to participate in these projects," he said.
The minister noted that Bashneft, Alrosa and Rosneft could be privatized first.
"These are the companies that are already in the privatization plan. Public companies that have listings, thus - technically and legally ready and are known to investors. That is where we are going to start. Bashneft, Alrosa, Rosneft are all in this list," he said.
On February 2 Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that the final decision on the list of companies for privatization in 2016 was not yet accepted, the Government was instructed to finalize it.
"The final decision has not been made, specific companies or shares in these companies were not determined. The president instructed the government to finalize the list after the criteria was set, so that there would be an opportunity to once again meet with him in more substantive terms in some format," Peskov said.
Peskov said that the meeting held on Monday, "was not intended to finalize a list of companies to be privatized in 2016-2017, or some other year." According to him, the meeting attendees "talked about the main conceptual points - the basic framework of privatization."