The information came to newsmen from Sergei Generalov, Directors' Board chair of the Investors' Rights Protection Association. He addressed the media after a session of the Competitiveness and Private Enterprise Council, federal Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in the chair.
"Russia needs concession legislation. A majority of conferees agreed on the point," said Mr. Generalov.
The State Duma, parliament's lower house, has for now debated the bill in an initial reading. The raw way it is now, the bill offers many concealed stumbling blocks, warned Hermann Gref, Minister of Economic Development and Trade.
Every necessary amendment will be made as work on the bill goes on, Mr. Generalov reassured in reply. "We already have certain acting instances of government-private partnership. Not that capital investment will come in an avalanche as soon as the bill is passed-but it will offer explicit and transparent terms for work in such partnerships," he added.
Government economic hazards will subside with the bill passed, and private capital will have a greater chance to involve in infrastructural projects, said another conferee, Valeri Draganov, who leads the Duma committee for economic policies. "That will be a direct operation law," specified the MP.
As things are now, transport never receives government allocations to exceed 40 per cent of what it actually needs, said Igor Levitin, federal Transport Minister. He hopes the new law will attract private investors to that essential field.
"Private entrepreneurs and the government both see now their reciprocal goodwill to join hands on infrastructural projects. That was one of the basic achievements of today's session," remarked the minister.
Experts are streamlining the concession bill. Valeri Draganov thinks an improved version will get back to the Duma, November. He expects the house to pass the bill in its second and third readings at once, December or January.
"A realistic deadline," Igor Levitin said to that.
