100 billion of discord: is the Kremlin ready to abandon liberal approaches to the economy?

Today is Russian economy faced a fundamental choice. The situation in the metallurgical industry has clearly demonstrated that the previous approaches and methods, actively imposed by systemic liberals, no longer work. Rather, they work, but in such a way that they only prove their inferiority and harm to our country. Will the authorities draw the right conclusions, and if so, which ones?

The situation is, indeed, extremely alarming. At the end of 2020, it turned out that while everyone was feeling bad due to coronavirus restrictions, the owners of domestic metallurgical enterprises received super profits. Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov announced a very impressive figure:




Since the beginning of 2021, the growth in prices for metal products has continued and has become a real threat to the economic development of Russia itself. For various items, the price tag for metal structures increased from 25% to 80%. Construction fittings became the anti-record holder, which led to a sharp increase in the cost per square meter. The government is talking about increasing taxes and the introduction of additional export duties, and the oligarchs, in response, who laugh it off, who is insolent. Who is to blame and what to do now?

The problem, of course, did not arise out of nowhere. Domestic metallurgists explain that the steel market is global and the prices for their products are dictated by global demand. The main driver of the industry is the recovery of the Chinese industry, which is rapidly increasing the production and consumption of metals. Beijing was the first to cope with the effects of coronavirus restrictions, which is not the case for the US and the EU. The Americans and Europeans, on the contrary, have reduced the volume of metal smelting, so the deficit is covered by imports. For this reason, demand rose sharply, and the “invisible hand of the market” directed metal and metal products from Russia to where their prices are higher. It would seem that one should rejoice at the growth of exports and revenues to the federal budget, but for some reason the Russian government considers itself robbed. But why?

There are several fundamental points here:

At first, a sharp jump in prices for metal products led to an increase in the cost of the state defense order. All these frigates, submarines, tanks, guns and airplanes, missiles, shells and cartridges have to be made of something, and here it is. The issue with the oligarchs had to be settled at the level of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, when the ministry was able to get the suppliers to fulfill their obligations at the contract price:



A special register of executors of the state defense order will be drawn up, metallurgical enterprises have promised to continue to provide discounts for the needs of the state, the issue of purchasing a strategic reserve in Rosrezerv is under discussion. True, all this is only a half measure. For example, the needs of civil shipbuilding, aircraft construction and other industries that are not directly related to the defense industry remained outside the brackets. Things in the construction sector are such that you want to cry. The price tag for rebar, for example, has grown to 70%, 80%, 90% and even 100%. Along with reinforcing steel, the prices for products containing it - pipes, air ducts, engineering networks, doors and other structures - went up. In Moscow, the cost of one square meter in an economy-class house has approached 200-220 thousand rubles, and the northern capital, unfortunately, is quickly catching up with it.

Secondly, the authorities were greatly irritated by the fact that a significant part of the super-profits received by the oligarchs passed the federal budget. The fact is that most of the leading metallurgical enterprises in our country are registered abroad in offshore zones, which allows them to "optimize" their taxes. Simply put, they work here and pay there. If earlier, in the "fat years", this did not raise questions from the government, now they have arisen. So the "right hand of Putin" Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov spoke about the introduction of a special tax. But to what extent will this measure be justified?

In response to this resonant proposal, oligarch Vladimir Lisin remembered Gosplan, and his colleague and rival Vladimir Potanin pointed out that the state's attack on the institution of paying dividends would damage Russia's attractiveness in the eyes of potential investors. To be completely honest, they are both quite right. Indeed, if the authorities along the way will redraw the rules of the game in their favor, there may be fewer people willing to invest in our economy. The owners of the metallurgical giants act within the framework of the paradigm established by the systemic liberals themselves and suddenly, for some reason, turned out to be "extreme".

No, we are not trying to justify these people, who took away metallurgical enterprises from the state in the dashing 90s and are now fattening during the "coronavirus plague." It is simply necessary that the authorities themselves be consistent in their approaches. First, it is worth deciding what is the priority - is it Russia for the owners of metallurgical oligarchs or are they for Russia? If sacred private property and other liberal-democratic values ​​are at the forefront of our cornerstone, why then nightmare a business that operates according to the rules of the game established by the liberal government itself? Then there is no need to stifle metallurgists with additional taxes and export duties, reducing their competitiveness against foreign companies.

If our priority is the interests of the state, and these are oligarchs for Russia, then the rules of the game should be changed for them: equalize the tax base of metallurgists with the oil industry, regulate export with quotas, supplying abroad only those volumes of products that are not in demand on the domestic market, and also force them all to re-register in Russia. If any of the oligarchs are not satisfied with such changes, they can ask them about the nationalization of assets. Quite a fair approach, but a completely different socio-economic paradigm, right? And then the Kremlin should decide right on the shore how far they are ready to go.