Russian coal industry needs budget.support

Its producers require state support.

Following the metallurgists coal miners will require state support. Amid the falling of the investment in the industry they ask for interest rates subsidies and help with loans refinancing. Now the appetites are not too large –the annual subsidy is estimated at 2 billion roubles. But  analysts doubt that this will be enough, and find the binding of transport tariffs to global coal prices a more effective mechanism, which had already been discussed with the Russian Railways.

Yesterday the government considered the program of coal industry's development until 2030 (see "Kommersant" on March 7th). But during the meeting it became clear that it requires rapid and large-scale support. Vladimir Rashevsky, head of SIBENCO, the largest coal mining company in the country, outlined the picture of the crisis. According to him, the "half" of the world coal miners are unprofitable (on the basis of 2013 Russian received 22 billion roubles of consolidated loss against 60 billion roubles profit a year earlier), but "the industry is cyclical, the recession will necessarily end and "it is important not to miss it". To this end,the top manager stressed, we need government support, otherwise the investment in the industry will slow down. In 2013 it amounted to 75 billion roubles against 116 billion roubles in 2012 and in 2014 the situation should deteriorate further.