Tag Archives: leases

Field of dreams in a country of innovators

Ozerova, Marina. “Field of dreams in a country of innovators” (“Pole chudes v strane innovatorov”), Moskovskiy Komsomolets, 25366, 2 June 2010. 15 July 2010 http://www.mk.ru/economics/article/2010/06/01/502106-pole-chudes-v-strane-innovatorov.html

Summary of legislation introduced to Duma by Medvedev regarding the management organization of Skolkovo.  The now state-owned lands of the new “technopolis” will be handed over into the ownership of a president-appointed “management company;” however, the company will not be allowed to sell the land, only rent it to participating investors.  These investors (tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Siemens, etc.) are expected to receive huge tax breaks and which will not be expected to pay any taxes for their first ten years of operations if certain profit levels are not met.  These exemptions will also include exemptions from property and land taxes.

The Infrastructure Phantom

Stupin, Ilya. “Infrastrukturnii’ fantom,” Ekspert 34, 07 September 2009, 88-92. 25 June 2010 http://dlib.eastview.com.ezproxy.middlebury.edu/browse/doc/20586521.

Review of the problems facing infrastructure and highway building in Russia.   Article highlights probable missteps of the government in focusing its attention and resources on unneeded projects.  The recently created firm Rusavtodor overshadows existing motorway infrastructure construction enterprises; its legal status as an enterprise is ambiguous.  Its Land Code provides terms of lease on federal and non-real land properties, which exempt the company from receiving certain permissions and allow for the conclusion of lease agreements without usual public auctions. Questions are raised as to why this state-favored enterprise has been given “less complicated” projects and land on which to work, given the fact that its capital base is capable of tackling larger problems (92).

The Surveyor

Belykh, Anton.  “The Surveyor” (“Zemlemer”), Biznes-Zhurnal 7, 10 April 2007. 15 July 2010 http://www.business-magazine.ru/trends/government/pub282369.

Survey of Moscow land reform.  Article discusses the unwillingness of the Moscow bureaucracy to let go of land ownership, despite the April 2006 passage of No 431-PP “On the transfer of land plots in the city of Moscow to private ownership,” which was aimed at bringing Moscow land legislation and procedures in line with the federal Land Code.  More precisely, it was to change what had been, for all intents and purposes, a non-existent procedure for land privatization into its first existence.  For the law firm Vegas Lex, despite the significant number of land buy-out applications filed with the firm in the first nine months of the new law being in effect, no more than 10 privatization transactions have been successful.  Oleg Ryzhkov and his officers promise that the number of unsuccessful privatizations will soon start to come down.  In addition the bureaucracy’s grasping onto its land rights as a power control, the article also points out that lease payments from land tenants (mostly developers) generate more revenue than would land taxes (i.e., than they did in 2007 at publication).