Yabloko thinks that the Soviet debt restructuring terms are unfavourable for Russia. This is how the Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko faction commented on the agreement with the London Club of creditors secured by the First Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on February 13, 2000.
The agreement stipulates writing off 35% of the debt of the former USSR, with payments of the remainder of the debt to be staggered over 30 years and conversion of the debt of Vneshekonombank into the state obligations of the Russian Federation.
Sergei Ivanenko believes that restructuring of even 50% of the debt would mean a serious step back, constituting "a burden that Russia’s budget cannot sustain". "All the talk about writing off 35% of the debt as a large victory of our government is simply laughable," said Sergei Ivanenko. He drew the attention of the public to the fact that negotiations on debt restructuring started with the write-off of 70% of the debt.
At that time negotiations were conducted by Mikhail Zadornov, who was Finance Minister then and is now a member of the Yabloko faction in the Duma.
The London Club doesn't mention the Paris Club, not others...............BTW Gazprom absorbed most of Ucoss and Putin certainly doesn't own Gazprom. Oh well, I shant spoil your day with too many facts.
Dunromin you havent shown these >hundreds of billions of dollars< forgiven.
The debt to the London club was only 28 billion and 33% of the is roughly 10 billion written off. Not >hundreds of billions of dollars<
The rest of the principle has now been paid.
The Russians owed 42 billion to the Paris club. All of that princple has now been paid in full. Plus 1 billion extra for early repaiyment.
To say >Putin barely paid down a cracker< is plainly ridiculous.
BTW I didnt say Putin personally owned Gazpron but he ultimately runs it as a state owned enterprise.
And Putin did throw the richest man in Russia in jail and take all of Yukos assets of him.
Your now just trying to fudge the issue that you post was largely your imagination gone wild.
Adman: You appear to be unaware of the debts owed everywhere else including several Southern Hemisphere countries for enormous amounts of grain and wool (Just as a small example). I am not interested in digging up all the lists as they are too extensive and you are clearly set that Putin is “The Man” and paid everything anyway. You’re welcome to your view but it is a very limited one. You’ll actually find if you dig far enough that debts IIRC in excess of 600B were written off during the 15 or so years it took for Russia to reach agreement on settlement of all debts. Settlement did NOT equate to paying all. BTW, just one tiny piece of information, the Russian state does NOT own Gazprom, it owns approximately half. Go check out the shareholder list. Do you know what Medvedev’s role in Gazprom is/was?
I have no argument that Russia paid down the final agreed debts but they were a fraction of what was originally owed. Russia has done well of recent years but it remains a long way off being a serious long term economic powerhouse among the larger international economies. Maybe Russia will get there, maybe not. Time will show.
As for the future, I sincerely hope Russia does well, however budgeting has been done on very high resource prices and there is no certainty they will return to the $150/B Oil prices or if they do that they will stay there. The Mid east is smart enough to understand that long term affordable Oil supplies to the West are the key to their future. With Russia’s planned military spend, such price levels are required. Maybe they could start their road to dreamed domination by teaching the semi complete submarine they sold India because they couldn’t afford to complete it themselves to float. Perhaps if Putin is such a guru, he should manage the project personally rather than saving camera crews from Siberian Tigers?
Dunromin, in normal cases export goods are paid for once they loaded onto the ship. In the cash strapped days of the USSR, governments set up bank loans for the USSR or gave them registered government loans. This way, when goods went to the USSR these loans could immediately be were drawn down. The USSR honoured these loans and they became the Soviet debt ( $100b ) that Russia took over and largely paid down over the Putin era.
It is possible that some company sent goods to the USSR without these guarantees of payment and was not paid. Even after not being paid it is possible that they sent another without guarantees and was again not paid. It is not conceivable that they would then send a further 10,000 ships of goods ( $600b worth) without normal guarantees, knowing that they were not going to get paid.
But you can believe that happened if you wish.
I can agree with you that the problem with Russia is that all of the wealth is owned by a handful of oligards. Putin is taking advantage of the credit crunch to do something about that. Many of the oligards businesses can not refinance their loans and so with the cash in Russia’s bank he is buying up the oligards debt and renationalising their businesses.
Hi, Of course the number of girls contacting men has increased along with the number of emails you receive. This is the scam and all the agencies and most of the girls are in on it. On most sites the agencies get a fee for every letter read and sent so they send out thousands of mails in the hope that some are read and responded to. As times are hard at the moment this leads to an increase in scamming.
Oh well
As we predicted and expected – the M-Inlaw did not get her pension !!!!
Was told late December that there will be a delay in pension payment but it will happen on the 14th January
Surprise - surprise NO it didn’t.
I feel for the average person. Our Mama will be ok - she will have our support, but what about the millions of others that have no other support.