ECONOMICS OF THE COUNTRY

FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN RUSSIA

Nowadays, one of the real ways to raise the Russian economy and unclog one of its bottle-necks is foreign investment.

According to specialist assessments, less than 2% of the total volume of output production in Russia now falls on foreign investors, and the country's position in the international investment market is even less - only about 0.5%.

There are many reasons for such a situation. Among them, one can emphasize three conditional groups: political-legal, financial-economic and psychological. It is not a secret that up to the recent past, the Russian Government has manifested a sort of duality in respect to foreign companies. Officially it proclaimed support of foreign investors, but in practice state officials created insurmountable difficulties in registration of enterprises with foreign capital and imposed a rather high level of taxes and foreign-economic duties upon them. This legal and social instability did not guarantee a reliable and sustainable business for an investor. Information nihilism and the inactivity of state policy have developed in some Russian citizens, and especially with officials, a firm attitude that foreign investors are only using the tormented Russian economy to "pump out" monetary funds.

At the World Economic Forum held in Davos at the beginning of this year, the Russian delegation expressed readiness to review its investment policy, stressing that one of the government's main tasks at the present stage is to permanently strengthen the newly incipient confidence of foreign investors by its actions being successive and understandable for international business, thus creating real conditions for improvement in the investment climate in Russia. The President has declared a need for such policy and has voiced his support.

At present, Russia, in spite of a certain amount of possible risk, is a broad and non-enabled field of activity for investors. How can one avoid errors on the way? What is the legal basis of investment policy in Russia? And how can one reliably and effectively use investments in Russia?

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