Innovation projects won't be financed out of the state budget
Pyotr Orekhin
The state shouldn't finance venture innovation projects, as its care is only fundamental science, stated vice-prime minister Boris Alyoshin at the seminar "Collective investments and equity market" that took place yesterday. "The state should stand on the intersection acting as a traffic-controller and creating favorite business conditions", specified the vice-prime minister. This opinion was fully supported by chairman of Federal commission of equity market (FCEM) Igor Kostikov. In his opinion "the state has already done everything necessary for the development of venture investment". However, he added, "that doesn't mean that we'll be sitting twiddling our thumbs, we'll educate market players so they could easily use the tools available". The government representatives were kindhearted enough. The vice-prime minister couldn't help mentioning that he worried about "the gap between creation of science and technological results, technologies and financing of market product creation", but on the whole government officials looked optimistically. For example, according to Boris Alyoshin, "Russia has one of the most progressive legislations in the world, and the only thing it lacks is enforcement practice". Igor Kostikov in his turn didn't see "any problems with resource finding for innovation project financing for the next 3-5 years in the inner market". The only person who brought some discord into this harmonious duet was deputy minister of industry and science Andrei Fursenko who thought the state could still finance some projects. He was told it couldn't although without any further explanations why. It should be mentioned that Irog Kostikov felt like a hero of the occasion as the stock market had reached its highest rate yesterday and the total capitalization made about 150 billion dollars. FCEM chairman spoke about this achievement like careful parents usually speak of their child: "we have never been so big", he kept saying affectionately. The government representatives spoke about venture financing and venture business using words from foreign textbooks and giving examples from the British and American history as there's almost no venture business in Russia. Activities of foreign organizations like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and a small number of Russian firms don't play the leading role. In order to give venture business a possibility to develop in large scales, some problems should be solved. Igor Kostikov and Boris Alyoshin emphasized that a small firm should turn into a large one and provide income for investors by issuing shares (incorporation). According to Mr. Kostikov, the Russian stock market is ready for such actions. The problem, however, is whether the market players are ready for introduction of new securities that won't be issued by monopolies or raw-material companies and who becomes the major shareholder of “non-blue chips” in Russia. As if there's no demand, companies won't have any means for further development thus discouraging venture business. Demand for shares can appear only when raw ideas start turning into real products, that will be easily sold out and bring high profit. But even in this situation we'll face some problems. First, the volume of solvent demand in Russia is not large, and high-tech devices cost as a rule pretty much (at first at least). Second, we don't have the system of innovation commercialization and its development takes more than one decade. Third, according to Boris Alyoshin, Russian scientists often think that their science is “something clean and light and money is always dirty”.
