NOVO-OGAREVO – Russian President Vladimir Putin called to create conditions so that the waste recycling will turn in a promising kind of business. Putin noted at a special meeting devoted to the stimulating of the recycling of production and consumption waste that “the basic order should be established in this sphere.”
“We should change cardinally the situation in this sphere,” the president stated, noting that 3.5 billions of waste with a total weight of 90 billion tonnes are accumulated in Russia every year. The total area of the waste dumps in this country exceeds 2,500 square metres.
GORKI – Russia and Serbia signed on Wednesday seven joint cooperation documents. The documents were inked in the presence of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic.
In particular, the countries signed an agreement on the status of Russian war memorials on the territory of Serbia and Serbian war memorials in Russia, as well as an agreement on cooperation in the railway transport sector.
Besides, the two countries’ governments signed an agreement on the issuing of a state financial loan to Serbia. Also a memorandum on trade and economic cooperation was signed between the Russian Kaluga region government and the Serbian Ministry of Foreign and Domestic Trade and Telecommunications.
GORKI – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Russia upholds Serbia’s position on Kosovo.
After the talks with his Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic on Wednesday, Medvedev said this is Serbs’ privilege to solve this problem.
GORKI – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Russia and Serbia have all opportunities to return to the pre-crisis development of trade and economic cooperation and work out new investment projects.
GORKI – Russia will provide a loan to Serbia to replenish the budget at the amount of 500 million dollars.
An agreement to this effect will be signed after Wednesday’s meeting between Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic.
GORKI – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expects the Russian GDP to grow by 3 percent in 2013.
“We expect 3.5 percent,” Medvedev said at a press conference after Russian-Serbian talks on Wednesday, April 10. “Which we don’t quite like,” he added.
SKOLKOVO – Russian companies will spend about 550 billion roubles on innovations in 2013, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at the Future Dialogue international conference on Wednesday, April 10.
Another positive trend is the engagement of state-owned institutes in the innovation processes, the prime minister said, admitting, however, that “they are not always successful.”
MOSCOW – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has adopted the rules for the granting of inter-budget transfers from the federal budget of 2013 for the designing and construction of innovative centres of culture in the Primorye Territory, the Kaluga and Sverdlovsk regions. The related document was posted on the official Internet portal of legal information.
Under the document, the budget of the above-mentioned regions will receive 460 million roubles (USD 1 = RUB 31.00) for the purpose. In addition, the sum will be divided almost equally.
GORKI – Russia will finance the construction of the Serbian section of the South Stream gas pipeline and Serbia will pay back by offering special rates for the transportation of gas via its territory, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on Wednesday, April 10.
“We are prepared to provide full finding for building the Serbian section, and the Serbian side will subsequently return this money in the form of transit tariffs,” he said.
Miller noted that the overall cost of building the Serbian section of the pipeline is 1.7 billion Euros.
SKOLKOVO – There are three times more Germans working in Russia than Americans and Britons, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said.
He said a considerable number of Germans are engaged in engineering projects and science in Russia.
MOSCOW – Chiefs of CIS General Staffs have coordinated a plan of action for year 2014, chief of Russia’s General Staff Valery Gerasimov said on Wednesday.
The Russian General said the CIS Committee had prepared proposals on different issues, which would be submitted to the Council of CIS Defence Ministers, due to gather in Minsk on June 5.
MOSCOW – The Russian capital will host a meeting of the committee of the chiefs of the General Staffs of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which will discuss military cooperation issues, secretary of the Council of CIS Defense Ministers Lt-Gen Alexander Sinaisky told Itar-Tass.
The participants will consider 13 issues related to varied cooperation between CIS states, and make decisions on them, to be reviewed by the Council of CIS Defense Ministers in Minsk on June 5.
MOSCOW – Russia’s consumer inflation rate increased by 0.1 percent in the period from April 2 to April 8, 2013, the Federal State Statistics Service said in its regular report made public on Wednesday, adding that the indicator has gone up by 0.1 percent since the beginning of the current month and has grown by 2.0 percent since the beginning of the year.
Starting from the end of February, the country’s consumer inflation rate gained 0.1 percent every week, exclusive the period from March 26 to April 1, when the indicator stood at the zero point, the document reaffirmed.
MOSCOW – Mechel, one of the leading Russian mining and metals companies, announces signing an agreement with VTB Bank for a 40-billion-ruble (approximately 1.3 billion U.S. dollars) loan (Based upon the Russian Central Bank exchange rate of 31.21 RUR/U.S. dollar as of April 10, 2013), Mechel said in a statement.
The total of VTB Bank’s loaned funds will be used to refinance Mechel Group’s current debt, so this loan will not increase its credit portfolio. Twenty-five billion roubles (some 800 million U.S. dollars) from these funds will be used to repay short-term debt in 2013, including loans from VTB Bank and Mechel’s rouble bonds. This will enable the Group to significantly improve its liquidity and bring down the risk of refinancing in the next 12 months.
MOSCOW – Gazprom and Rosneftegaz have signed a purchase and sale agreement for Rosneftegaz-owned shares in 72 gas distribution companies (GDC).
The deal was concluded pursuant to the Russian government’s Directive of November 13, 2010. The deal is worth 25,861,590,218 roubles, Gazprom said.
MOSCOW – Russia’s leading diamond producer ALROSA’s Aikhal underground mine reached its design capacity of 500,000 tonnes of ore per year, the company said.
The Aikhal pipe deposit is one of ALROSA’s oldest deposits, with its open-pit mining being started in 1961 to take more than 30 years. In 1997 the open pit bottom reached the design level of +320m, whereupon open pit mining at the deposit was completed.
MOSCOW – ROSATOM is among more than 200 exhibitors that are participating in Africa’s largest power and energy show. The exhibition which is known as the “Power and Electricity World Africa 2013” is an annual event which brings together 4500 stakeholders and decision makers in the power and energy industries from around the globe, the company said in a statement on Wednesday, April 10.
MOSCOW – The Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port and the Murmansk Shipping Line will be privatised before the end of the year, the Transport Ministry said on Wednesday, April 10.
The federal government owns 25.5 percent of shares in the Murmansk Shipping Line. Twenty percent of shares in the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port are held by the Federal Agency for the Management of Federal Property (Rosimushchestvo) and 5 percent by Russian Railways.
MOSCOW – More than 450 kilometers of federal roads will be commissioned in Russia and 9,000 kilometers renovated and repaired in 2013, the Transport Ministry said on Wednesday, April 10, in a report on the main guidelines for its activities in 2013-2015.
Over 1,670 kilometres of federal roads will be built and renovated in the next three years, including 451.5 kilometres in 2013.
MOSCOW – A plane of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry with humanitarian consignment for Syrian refugees has left for Lebanon, a ministry official told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
“An Il-76 plane took off from the airfield in Ramenskoye near Moscow at 10:00 Moscow time,” he said.
It will deliver to Beirut almost 27 tonnes of humanitarian cargoes.
MOSCOW – Russia intends to offer a number of joint mining projects to Chinese investors, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said in an interview to the Chinese mass media ahead of a visit to China by a delegation of Russian officials and business persons.
MOSCOW – Migrants wishing to work in Russia will be soon able to pass language tests in Russia’s cultural centres in the CIS, the head of the Federal Agency for the CIS, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo), Konstantin Kosachev, told a State Duma session on Wednesday.
MOSCOW – The main links of the innovative system in Russia were created, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov said at an opening ceremony of the Centre of Plasma Studies and Technologies at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University on Wednesday.
MOSCOW – Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry and India’s Interior Ministry have created a commission on emergency situations.
On Wednesday, Russian Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov and Indian Interior Minister Sushilkumar Shinde signed a document on the Russian-Indian commission on emergency situations.
The Russian-Indian commission will inform everyone about the direct threat to natural and technogenic catastrophes and work out proposals to train specialists.
Russia and India will also exchange information about research studies and plan research projects.
BISHKEK – Bishkek and Ankara are planning to increase trade turnover up to one billion U.S. dollars, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Zhantoro Satybaldiyev said.
At the talks with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, the prime minister said both countries had the potential for further development.
MINSK – Belarus is number one among the CIS member countries as to the number of organ transplant surgeries.
“Twenty-nine transplant surgeries per one million people are performed yearly, against only nine in Russia and 2.2 in Ukraine,” the head of the Republican Scientific-Practical Centre for Organ and Tissue Transplantation, Oleg Rummo, said on Wednesday.
He said that last year 274 transplant surgeries were performed in the republic, and over 122 such surgeries have already been performed this year.
YEREVAN – More than 200 modern navigators have been delivered this year to equip the Russian military base which has been stationed in Armenia in accordance with an interstate agreement signed by the Russian Federation and Armenia, an unnamed source from the Russian base told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
The navigators known as "Perunit"," Grot" and "Briz" by the Russian classification are compatible with the GLONASS and GPS systems, which contributes to their reliability and ensures a high degree of precision.
KIEV – The preparation for the launch of Ukraine’s first communication satellite Lybid from the Baikonur cosmodrome proceeds as scheduled, Ukrainian State Space Agency chief Yuri Alexeyev said on Wednesday.
“The satellite will cover the whole territory of Ukraine and a part of Russia,” he said.
The State Space Agency estimates that the satellite’s pay-off period will make up 11-12 years.
MOSCOW – The Federal Agency for CIS Affairs, Compatriots Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation (Rossotrudnichestvo) will open more Russian science and culture centres in Ukraine, the Agency’s Head Konstantin Kosachev said.
“We have three centres but there will be five or six in Ukraine,” Kosachev said during Question Time in the State Duma on Wednesday, April 10.
KIEV – Ukraine plans to raise its grain output to 80 million tonnes and production of industrial crops to 15 million tonnes within the next five years, Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov told the government’s meeting on Wednesday.
“In order to fulfil the task, the republican agricultural sector must renew annually almost 7,500 grain harvesters, 35,000 tractors of various kind and more than 2,500 sowing machinery units,” the prime minister said.
CHISINAU – Moldovan President Nicolae Timofti has nominated incumbent Prime Minister Vlad Filat for this post again.
Timofti made the announcement after consultations with the heads of parliamentary factions on Wednesday, April 10.