Investments do not keep up with agreements – Newspaper Kommersant No. 41 (7486) of 03/13/2023
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Kommersant got acquainted with expert assessments of the government’s most promising mechanism for stimulating private investment in the economy – agreements to protect and encourage investment. After the transformation of the SZPK at the end of 2022, it has not yet been possible to restart the investment boom in the Russian Federation, according to Sherpa Group data. Investors are slower to conclude new agreements, which is explained both by more thorough verification of large projects, and problems due to sanctions and the search for import-substituting equipment. Meanwhile, some of the old projects are in jeopardy: the mechanism did not take into account the interests and capabilities of the regions and turned out to be vulnerable to sharp external shocks.
The SZPK mechanism, restarted at the end of 2022, has not yet been fully operational, according to the Sherpa Group study “SZPK and investments: will the updated tool help to attract them?”. From the end of 2022 to the beginning of March 2023, under the new rules, only six agreements for 408 billion rubles were signed, while in 2020–2021, 25 agreements for 895 billion rubles were signed over the same period. In total, for all four months of the first version of the SZPK, 36 agreements were concluded for 1.2 trillion rubles. According to experts, the slowdown in the process may be due to a deeper and longer verification of projects by VEB.RF, the consequences of an investment pause due to a more careful choice of initiatives for implementation by both the public and private parties, as well as a longer search for import-substituting equipment, if necessary. .
As the Ministry of Economy explained to Kommersant, the last six new agreements were signed in December 2022. Then, after a pause in the operation of the mechanism, investors were in a hurry to sign SZPK en masse until the agreements became obsolete. “Now the work has continued as usual, about 30 applications are under consideration,” the ministry added.
Recall that after the transformation, the SZPK mechanism retained the main idea – the inclusion in agreements of guarantees of the invariability of regulatory conditions. However, as budget obligations to investors grew, the balance of interests between business and the state shifted in favor of the latter: requirements for the volume of capital investments were increased, debt financing was allowed, control over investments was tightened due to the involvement of companies in tax monitoring, and the regions got the opportunity to give negative opinions on projects ( see Kommersant dated May 16, 2022).
As a result of the reboot, SZPK managed to focus on larger projects. On average, new agreements are almost 90% larger than the old ones – 68 billion rubles. for one project against 36 billion rubles. in the previous version, calculated in Sherpa Group. New agreements were concluded mainly for capital-intensive projects in the chemical and mining industries, while two years ago almost 25% of all projects were related to agriculture and the food industry. However, large projects are more vulnerable to sanctions, an analysis of old SZPKs has shown. By March 2023, smaller and faster projects were launched under 11 agreements worth RUB 83.3 billion. Experts ranked 26 projects worth 804.6 billion rubles as relatively successful – the facilities for them were put into operation, are close to it, or are being built without obvious problems. However, according to Sherpa Group, ten projects worth 428.4 billion rubles are at risk of implementation and revision of conditions due to sanctions that have led to a deterioration in logistics and a decrease in demand. Of these, the most problematic are five projects worth 306.4 billion rubles.
For example, the planned construction of the Segezha Zapad pulp and paper mill in Karelia (178 billion rubles) is now more logical in the eastern part of the country, taking into account logistics and difficulties with the supply of equipment. However, for some projects, the problems are not related to external restrictions, but are explained by less guarantees of the initial mechanism for the state. In particular, investors concluded old SZPKs without taking into account the interests and opportunities of the regions; as a result, the constituent entities of the Russian Federation refuse the conditions proposed for SZPKs and are looking for other opportunities to launch investment projects. In addition, unlike concession agreements, the SZPK is less binding, so the signed agreements do not always mean attracting the promised investments, experts state.
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