Zee Beam News

11-03-2005 kommersant.ru - The Duma is likely to pas the first reading of a new edition of the law on mineral resources today, in spite of serious criticism of it from Duma committees. Deputies say that they can make the necessary corrects to it before the second reading comes up. The law has been under development by the Natural Resources and Economic Ministries since 2001. The main innovation of the new law is continuing centralization of almost all authority to manage mineral resources on the federal level and the conversion from administrative to civil law management of the resources. The regions are being deprived of any influence over the use of mineral resources, which are designated as federal property in the new law. While regional authorities will still have the right to use commonly found resources (sand, gavel, etc.), their influence in the use of resources such as gas and oil will be limited to two places on auction commissions along with federal officials. Experts say that it would be much more efficient to divide resource management by size of deposit, since 80-90 percent of deposits are small and account for only 20 percent of annual production. It will be difficult to manage deposits of that type from Moscow. The new law states that "the right to use mineral resources can be provided to legal entities established in accordance with Russian legislation and persons who are Russian citizens and registered as individual entrepreneurs. Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev said that that will force foreign companies to open Russian subsidiaries, and thus pay Russian taxes. Strategic (especially large) deposits are not treated in the present text of the law. Amendments concerning them are expected to limit access by foreigner to them more strictly. The law specifies that the state can declare any deposit "strategic" at its discretion.