Delovoi Vtornik

Drugs threaten global security

The world community should pool its efforts to fight international drug trafficking.

The U.S. Department of State and NATO have a theory that if poppy plantations in Afghanistan are destroyed the farmers will have nothing to feed their families with and will join the Taliban. But Antonio Costa, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, challenges this approach: Afghan farmers get no more than 5% of the end value of the product.

Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov recently told a conference in Singapore how the Soviet Union dealt with the drug threat. He said that regardless of the criticism of a Soviet presence in Afghanistan, no one doubted that a drug issue was almost nonexistent in that country. This was because, despite the armed confrontation, the Afghan government, backed by the Soviet Union, was focused on the social and economic requirements of the population. The 142 plants and factories built by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan still make up the economy of a half-destroyed country. Nothing else has been created in the past 10 years.

Viktor Ivanov, head of the Federal Drug Control Service, says that Russia is combating Afghan heroin trafficking practically alone. In the first six months of 2010, it seized almost 4,000 shipments of opiate and hashish from Afghanistan. But, he says, the fight against drugs will have no effect unless opium poppy plantations in Afghanistan are destroyed. A key objective is to stop drug production in Afghan fields altogether, as the U.S. did in Colombia.

U.N. anti-drug experience has shown that separate efforts by individual countries to cut short international trafficking are not enough. What is needed is to concentrate efforts and carry out cooperative actions. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov believes that opiate production in Afghanistan should be qualified as a threat to international security. He says that for six years Russia has been trying to coordinate international cooperation. But a clear response is still absent. Nor did it get a reply at the latest meeting in July of the Russia-NATO Council. Moscow again heard promises to cooperate but nothing more. NATO's official spokesman James Appathurai said NATO countries were eager to expand cooperation with Russia in areas important both for NATO and for Russia. But in practice, nothing moves.

Rossiiskaya Gazeta

Government to regulate over-borrowing

The Russian government has decided to protect individual lenders by obliging banks to take into account potential borrowers' incomes. Some banks currently do this and others don't.

The report on the protection of the rights of financial services consumers, drafted by the Finance Ministry, stipulates penalties for banks that fail to ensure loan repayment. According to the report, the total sum of the loan and the monthly interest payment should be adjusted to a borrower's income, fines and penalties are to be commensurate with the size of the loan debt, and banks are to be penalized for failure to ensure loan repayment.

The main idea is to protect people, especially in the low-income group, from taking out loans that are beyond their means. The problem was evident prior to the recent financial crisis. Now, people are again taking out large loans, and banks are eager to oblige.

The objective has been formulated correctly, said Sergei Moiseyev, director of the Center for Economic Studies at the Moscow University of Industry and Finance. The World Bank recommended introducing rules to adjust loans to income, he said. This could be done by obliging the banks to request that the borrowers provide information about their combined income, and by preventing loans from exceeding a certain specified income.

Some banks are already doing this. They have rules that say spending on loans should not exceed 30% of a client's income, Moiseyev said. Large banks issue big loans only to the borrowers who present all the required documents.

However, it will be difficult to force banks to limit their interest rates or to ban usury. Such bans were popular in the 1970s, but later most countries decided that they were ineffective and even detrimental because they restrain free trade in banking. Nevertheless, many states in the United States and provinces in Germany still have a ban on usury, the analyst said.

A maximum interest rate is set at 20% or adjusted to an indicator, such as the profitability of state bonds. But such measures can be effective only in countries with stable, low inflation, Moiseyev said, adding that Russia so far does not satisfy these conditions.

Vedomosti

Different views on innovation

Dmitry Medvedev and the Russian public have different views on where modernization should begin. The citizens prioritize reducing the number of state officials, ensuring independent courts, fair competition and re-introducing elected governors.

Russia's modernization has been interpreted by Russian citizens not in terms of technological innovation, but as political change, according to a survey conducted by the ZIRKON research group, a nongovernmental think-tank, and OMI Russia. This trend was particularly pronounced among respondents deemed to be in the leading segments, such as qualified specialists or managers, who live in large cities, are very active on the Internet and have high incomes.

The respondents were offered to name five indicators of whether or not the country is modernized. The eradication of corruption (47% of Russians and 73% of those in the top tiers) and a reduction in the number of state officials (42% and 66% respectively) were mentioned the most. Creating the conditions needed for fair competition took third place in the top tier's list of the most important criteria, at 51%, while the general population put the invention of cancer drugs in third place with 27%.

Political criteria for modernization named included: people's active participation in local government institutions (18% and 31% respectively), a return to direct elections for governors (12% and 15%), independent courts (20% and 37%), freedom to protest (10% and 12%) and equal access to mass media (9% and 15%). The invention of new power sources (21% and 38%) and the transition to digital television (12% and 6%) were listed among the technological criteria.

The presidential commission on modernizing the economy concentrated on five technological fields of modernization: energy efficiency, nuclear and space exploration, as well as medicine and information technology. The Skolkovo innovation center will be the most expensive of these projects. The government will allocate some 170 million roubles ($5.6 million) to it by 2015.

The population still does not understand where Dmitry Medvedev's modernization path will lead them. The majority considers "modernization" an abstract word, says Igor Zadorin, General Director of the ZIRKON research group.

Dmitry Badovsky, Deputy Director of the Social Systems Institute, believes that it will become clear whether the population supports this modernization and whether it is implemented in the country, when it prompts an increase in taxes or the retirement age.

The general public is right in its instinctive response: modernization should not only apply to the economy but to political institutions as well, says Evgeny Gontmakher from the Institute of Contemporary Development.

RBC Daily

Russian tourism industry to get 96 billion rubles from the federal budget over the next few years

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has endorsed a federal targeted program to expand tourism in 2011-2016. The industry is to get 96 billion rubles from the federal budget under the program to be drafted by the Ministry of Sport, Tourism and Youth Policy.

An appendix to the policy endorsed by the prime minister states that beach tourism is the most popular form of recreation in Russia. Experts say that 38% of Russians like to holiday on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts (Southern Federal District), as well as on the Baltic (Northwestern Federal District) and the Sea of Japan (Far Eastern Federal District). The Southern Federal District has particularly good prospects for this kind of tourism.

Russia boasts 2,000 km of beaches by warm seas, but only one-third of them are fit for civilized holidaymaking, the appendix says. In 2009, Russia welcomed 13.5 million tourists onto its beaches. Given proper development, the beaches could cater for an additional 12 million tourists a year.

Another attractive tourist activity is visiting Russia's historical and cultural sites. These trips account for 20% of the domestic tourist flow. The Central and Northwestern districts are centers for this kind of tourism. In 2009, tourists travelling for educational purposes numbered 7.1 million. The Southern, Volga, Siberian and Far Eastern districts offer particular opportunities for this tourism.

Last year, the regional budgets allocated four billion rubles to regional programs for tourism. However, the actual amount needed to establish up-to-date tourist and recreational centers in promising tourist areas, according to the endorsed policy, is 326.8 billion rubles. Forecasts say that if the developers' plans are realized, the number of Russians taking holidays in Russia will grow from the current 32.1 million to 45 million, while that of foreign tourists visiting Russia will rise from 3.3 million to 23 million.

Vzglyad

Syria set to join Customs Union free-trade zone

Syria would like to join the free-trade zone of the trilateral Customs Union on post-Soviet territory. For support, Damascus is looking to Belarus, where relations with Russia are strained. However, this idea seems far-fetched because Syria is listed as a country that supports international terrorism.

Meeting with Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky in Minsk, President Bashar Al-Assad said that Syria would like to join the free-trade zone of the Customs Union currently comprising Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan.

President Al-Assad said the implementation of these plans would strengthen and expand Syria's trade and economic relations with Belarus and the Customs Union as a whole.

A month ago, Natalia Slyusar, legal-department director at the Customs Union Commission, told a congress of Kazakhstan's business community about Syria's desire to join the free-trade zone. She said Syria had asked the Customs Union Commission for documents clarifying the accession to the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

But Minsk is not a very good lobbyist of Damascus' interests in the process of accessing the free-trade zone because Belarusian-Russian relations remain strained.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said two days before the July 5, 2010 Eurasian Economic Community summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, that Belarus had ratified ratify documents on joining the Customs Union. Belarus was the last country to do so.

Moscow and Minsk also remain divided on the issues of oil-and-petroleum customs duties and car-import duties.

Syria is unlikely to join the Customs Union because Russia and Kazakhstan had decided to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) in line with their agreed positions as a Customs Union.

Russia and Kazakhstan would probably be unable to become WTO members if Syria becomes part of the Customs Union. Moreover, this factor would complicate the accession of Ukraine, a WTO member, to the Customs Union.

The United States also lists Syria among countries, including Cuba, Iran and Sudan, which support international terrorism.

RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.

MOSCOW, July 27 (RIA Novosti)