Russia does not rule out a possibility of helping the euro zone with investments, said Arkady Dvorkovich, assistant to the Russian President, on the eve of the G20 summit. In the current situation Russia will allocate for that purpose as much money as it can.
Meanwhile, some countries urge Europeans to cope with the difficulties by themselves and do not promise to help them.
Russia could make its contribution to the prevention and overcoming of a new round of the crisis, Novye Izvestia writes. According to Dvorkovich, Russia does not rule out in principle a possibility of helping the euro zone and is ready to invest in the European economy some ten billion dollars, using the structures of the International Monetary Fund. “We did not receive any official requests from EU, but if our European partners make such a request, the official bodies of Russia – the Finance Ministry, the Central Bank and the government – will consider it seriously along with a possibility of rendering assistance,” Dvorkovich said, according to Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
One should not expect any dividends from it, however, the newspaper writes. The EU leaders pointed out that assistance from the outside would not lead to any political preferences for the rescue countries. China refrains from giving concrete promises to the Europeans and urges them to overcome all the economic problems they are facing, using their own efforts.
At the same time, Europe will agree to receive help from anybody, including Russia, say experts of Nezavisimaya Gazeta. “Europeans now find themselves in the situation, when any opportunity should be used for stabilising the situation in the euro zone. In this situation it is very much probable that Europe will accept the offers of the Kremlin,” said Alexei Kozlov, senior analyst of the department of analysis and risk management of UFS Investment Company. “One should not forget, however, that many European leaders are afraid of the consolidation of Russia’s position in Europe, in condition that the European countries very much depend on the imports of energy carriers from Russia. This frightens them a great deal.” The countries, integrated in the euro zone, are certainly interested in attracting capital from the developing markets, Kozlov believes. The Chinese market is the biggest of them. It has shown a perceptible growth over the past few years. Russia is well behind China in this respect. This is why Europeans are not enthusiastic over Moscow’s proposals.
There is practically no risk that the G20 leaders will not reach agreement, Yakov Mirkin, head of the department of international capital markets, the Institute of World Economy and International Relations under the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta. The main problem is that G20 does not keep up with the development of the situation. According to Mirkin, the year 2012 will resemble the years of 2010-2011, “with shocks, risks and hand management. The difficulties of the euro zone will be settled, but problems will emerge in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Speculators will continue to be active, and attacks of the ‘hot money’ will be continued. We do not know in what country or in what trade segment this will happen.”