Putin was offered a massive withdrawal of money from big business

• finance.rambler.ru
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• August 9th, 2018

The presidential aide offered a massive withdrawal of money from big business 

Business Newspaper "Vzglyad" 14 hours ago

The presidential aide Andrei Belousov invited the head of state Vladimir Putin to withdraw 513.7 billion rubles of super-profits from metallurgists, fertilizer producers and  Sibur for 2017.

The funds are needed by the budget for the implementation of the "May decrees," Belousov said in a letter, RBC reports.

The authenticity of this letter was confirmed by three sources in the companies that are mentioned in this letter. Putin put the resolution "agree" on this letter on July 28, 2018, it follows from the document. This was confirmed by one of the sources. However, when answering the question about the president's approval of this initiative, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskovanswered: "No". The journalists sent a request to Belousov's office. In a letter, Belousov informs that in 2017, thanks to market conditions, metallurgical and chemical exporting companies managed to earn over 1.5 trillion rubles of profit before interest, taxes and depreciation (EBITDA), and the tax burden in these industries was lower than in the oil and gas , he points out - 7% versus 28%. In 2016, the government has already taken a number of measures to withdraw about 600 billion rubles from the oil and gas export companies that they received as a result of the devaluation of the ruble, Belousov said.

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"In world practice, the seizure of excess revenues generated due to market conditions and independent of the actions of company management, extends not only to the oil and gas industry, but also to other resource sectors," the presidential aide notes.

It offers "to take" sverdohody "from metallurgists and chemists" taking into account the sanctions restrictions, as well as the need to preserve investment opportunities. " The appendix to Belousov's letter contains a list of 14 metallurgical, mining and chemical companies: Evraz , Norilsk Nickel , MMK, NLMK , Severstal , Metalloinvest , SUEK , Mechel , ALROSA , Polyus Gold , Sibur , "Fosagro" , "Uralkali" and  "Acron". They are proposed to withdraw "super profits" from 5.49 billion rubles from Evraz to 114.2 billion rubles from Norilsk Nickel. These figures are based on an analysis of the profitability of these companies in comparison with the indicators of the oil and gas industry, their revenues and the magnitude of the tax burden. The existing tax system does not create conditions for additional seizures of super profits, Belousov notes. As the source said, the Ministry of Finance instructed to develop such a mechanism .

Analyst S & P Global Ratings Sergey Gorin said that the implementation of such an initiative will negatively affect the dividends of companies.

"If the state takes this step, we expect that the dividend payments will be adjusted accordingly, as many large companies tie dividends to the cash flow," he explained.