Russia, un patrimonio di risorse da mettere a frutto

The economy of the Russian Federation started, from the beginning of the new millennium, a stage of growth mainly based on the export of energy raw materials. Nevertheless, the production structure of the country has to develop other sector, such as agriculture, that suffers for a delay in technological equipment and machinery's overall quality. The plan for the agricultural development approved by the Government in July 2012, includes a minor project specifically devoted to the update of machinery

Who knows if Diderot, looking at the new millenium's Russia would still call it "a colossus on feet of clay"? Probably not. The country has today the largest territorial extension (equal to 11% of emerged lands), and even if it carries on shoulders the heavy inheritance by the former Soviet Union, stands out as one of the main characters on the world stage. Thanks to the abundance of raw materials, Russia has always been a target for investors and after the dissolution of URSS has kept playing this role, even though today is facing a complex period of transition.

The political process of democratization has to be completed and from an economic perspective the liberistic model, introduced during the '90s, struggles to find a balance due to administrative structures and a social organization built and consolidated in more than 70 years of collectivism, with a total lack of individual initiative both in agricultural and industrial sectors and in service industries. However, the economy of Russian Federation started to increase at the beginning of the new millennium, pushed by the high sale prices of oil, of which Russia is the second exporter in the world. During 2012 the economic growth continued at the same speed as of 2011, even though in the second half of the year and in the first months of 2013 it slowed down, partly due to a "contagion" effect from the Eurozone. The most recent statistics indicates for the current year a GNP growth under 3%. At the same time, unemployment is around 6% (with a minimum of 5.2% in May 2013) with inflation, generally high, at about 7%.

If in 2012 the Russian oil production had an increase by 1.3%, reaching the new historical peak of the Post-Soviet era (more than 10 million oil drums per year), the natural gas production had a 2.3% decrease, especially by reason of the demand compression of methane in the EU (a decrease estimated around 7-8% in 2012). On the other hand Moscow still remains the first gas exporter in the world. The net of small and medium-seized enterprises is still poorly developed and is mainly concentrated in business and consumer goods sectors, while industry is still weak. There are limited support policies by the authorities for small and medium-seized enterprises, as well as appropriate financial resources.

The authorities assumed the responsibilities to promote investments in the country, aiming at removing obstacles in matter of legislation, costs, administration, jurisdiction and bureaucracy, which represent a state of uncertainty for foreign investors. The uncertainty of the juridical situation is complicated by frequently changing laws and difficulties of the judicial and administrative apparatus to apply them. For this reason the figure of the "Tutor", a government representative, was introduced years ago for Italy and Russia, in order to prevent and resolve business controversies, especially when a foreign partner was involved, without going through the court. To some extent the Tutor's intervention proved to be effective and found positive solutions to many controversies.

Special Economic Zones (ZES) were created in order to promote the process of modernization and to give attention to peripheral areas of production, with the aim to attract foreign investors. On a federal level there are four types of zones: for industry and production (Lipetsk, Tatarstan, Samara, Sverdlovsk); for technology and innovation (Moskow areas: Zelenograd and Dubna; Tomsk; Saint Petersburg); for airports (Ul'janovsk) and harbours (Khabarovsk and Murmansk), besides 13 zones for turism and recreational activities. In addition, there are Special Economic Zones created by the Regions (among these, Sverdlovsk and Ul'janovsk are worth mentioning for the high potential of development). The context determined by the entrance of the Russian Federation in WTO seems to be interesting: according to the preview by the World Bank, in the medium-term the entrance in the WTO will determine an economic increase for Russia between 1 and 3% while in the long-term the increase could also reach 11%.

The European Commission has reckoned that this should correspond to a saving on custom duties from UE to Russia of 3,9 billion USD (la valuta non è specificata). The main reforms Russia strived to undertake, upon joining WTO, concerned the opening of internal markets and the increase of integration in business trades' multi-lateral system. This implies among other things reduction of custom duties and current charges, a simplified access to services market, respect of regulations concerning the international business trade and protection of intellectual property.

The adoption of these measures should determine in perspective an appreciable improvement of the environment for exporters and foreign investors. With things in full swing there will be a decrease of custom duties between 10% of 2011 and 7.8%; for agricultural products the coverage index will decrease from the current 13.2% to 10.8% while for industrial products from 9.5% to 7.3%. It emerges a shape of a country with a strong industrial growth, capable of attracting foreign investors and producing goods of main importance, but poor on know-how from abroad that could fill production gaps and exploit the immense potential of its natural resources. As a matter of fact, Russia is the world's main vendor of energy products but with an industrial system and the primary sector at a very early stage and not so developed.

Italy, on the other side, does not have raw materials but prides itself on having diversified manifacturing and agro-industrial sectors. There is a complementarity between the two productive systems that transforms these countries into natural business partners. The complementarity is not only reflected by the balance of trade, but also by those joint ventures that promote technology. According to EU statistical indicators, in 2012 the business trade between Italy and the Russian Federation corresponded to 28 billion EUR, of which 18 concerning import and 10 Italian export. Besides, the statistics concerning the first four months of 2013 show a noticeable increase of Italian export to the Federation, going from 2,948 billion EUR in the period January-April 2012 to 3,288 billion EUR as of the same period in 2013, with an increase of 11.5%.

If this trend is going to be steady, by the end of the year the 2008 historical record registered by Italian exports (10.5 billion EUR) will be passed. Overall, Italy is the world's fifth business partner of the Federation (the fourth customer and the seventh vendor) and the second in Europe (after Germany). The main destination of Italian investments is still the energy sector, where besides the traditional role played by ENI, ENEL and Finmeccanica are worth mentioning.

Therefore it is possible to imagine how the new millenium's Russia developed a wide and increasing market of machinery. In 2011 the country imported machinery for almost 106 billion USD, corresponding to the 60% of the total amount of imports with an increase of 40% compared with last year. A strong demand of agricultural machinery comes from Russian enterprises that need to process efficiently the abundance of natural resources of the country. According to statistics published by the Russian Ministry for Agriculture (based on information given by regional authorities of the agro-industrial sector and of the National Agricultural Survey), in 2011 the agricultural machinery was mainly obsolete, at least older than 10 years.

This concerns 35,000 tractors with engine power above 250 hp. Of these, 4,000 machines are used in family farms. There are also 75,000 combine-harvesters and 13,000 forage harvesters. Of these, 21,000 combine-harvesters and 1,000 forage harvesters are used in family farms. It seems that the government understood the urgent demand of modern machinery for Russian agriculture. On 14 July 2012 a programme of development for agriculture including a sub-project was in fact approved. The project "Technic and Technological Modernization and Innovative Development" included specific measures for the purchase of agricultural machinery.

The programme was renewed for the 2012-2014 biennium with an amount of funding of 8,5 billion RUB, with the aim of increasing the tractors fleet of about 128,000 tractors and 53,000 combine-harvesters. At the moment, more than 50% of tractors and combine-harvesters have been used beyond time limits. The country, despite having an historical tradition in the sector of agricultural mechanization with the improvement of its qualitative standards, has a conspicous part of its market (about 35%) covered by import machinery, an amount that is destined to become larger with the new regulation in terms of international trade, adopted by the federal government after joining WTO in August 2012.

Within the next few years, depending on the type of machinery, custom duties will decrease, creating as a consequence better conditions for the development of business trades. In the light of these considerations, FederUnacoma – the National Machiney Federation for Agrculture – is interested in the Russian market, which is the cutting edge of the BRIC countries (Braziel, Russia, India and China) and the entry to market penetration towards remote Asian countries such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia, China, Thailand and Vietnam.

The opportunities offered by the Russian market together with an urgent demand of internationalization of the Italian business network are the base of the strategic choices made by FederUnacoma, which is promoting for several years the presence of Italian businesses in the Russian area.

This year, besides the habitual presence to the most important trade fairs of the sector, such as Golden Autumn and Agrosalon, the dialogue between these two business partners, was promoted with a meeting of Russian and Kazakh businesspeople with representatives of the main enterprises for agricultural machinery. In order to strengthen the relationships and to start a new cooperation, a delegation of Russian businesspeople attended Agrilevante (Bari, 17-20 October).

This important event for southern Italy was connected to business interests that may have a knock-on effect for the sales recovery of the machinery market.