Six special economic areas will be created in Russia, including four technical and promotional areas and two industrial and production areas, German Gref, the Economy Minister of Russia, told reporters as he commented on the results of a tender for the creation of special economic areas.

He said the technical and promotional areas would be set up in Zelenograd (microelectronic design), Dubna in the Moscow region (nuclear and physical technologies), St. Petersburg (information technology) and Tomsk (development of new materials).

The industrial and production areas will be created in the Lipetsk region (manufacturing of household electronics and perhaps furniture) and Tatarstan (production of car parts and hi-tech petrochemical products).

Seventy applications for special economic areas had been submitted from 41 regions of Russia to a government commission, Gref said. "Unfortunately, we were not quite happy with the level of applications for industrial and production areas,” he noted. The Minister said he had tried to find an adequate application from the Far East and Eastern Siberia but no application from those regions was considered "well-prepared or thoroughly developed.”

Gref said the Economy Ministry wanted to offer a new special economic area tender next year. One reason for a new tender was the need to help the Far East and Eastern Siberia to prepare their applications and win a tender for the creation of special economic areas on their territory.

"We removed all political considerations from our decision,” he said, commenting on the tender. It was possible, Gref added, that the commission would back proposals to build industrial parks in some regions without giving them special economic area status. Investment in special economic areas will be initiated in 2007.

On the subject of applications rejected by the commission, Ivan Bortnik, the head of the commission responsible for the selection of technical and promotional areas, said the four projects that won were of national importance, reports RBC.
(Source: RZD Partner)