NEWS

On 6 February 2017, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade of Tatarstan Albert Karimov held a meeting of the working group for implementing joint projects between QIWI Group and the Republic of Tatarstan. The meeting was also attended by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Information and Communications of Tatarstan Roman Shaikhutdinov, top executives of other ministries, agencies, and enterprises of the republic.

The working group discussed the course of preparing the application by QIWI Group for obtaining the SEZ Innopolis resident status, cooperation within the framework of the ongoing educational programmes for training IT professionals and upgrading skills of SME representatives in the Republic of Tatarstan. In addition, representatives of the QIWI Group group presented their project, a credit card called Sovest with an opportunity of interest-free use of loans. The participants to the meeting discussed practicable methods of launching this project in the most efficient way.

On February 3 this year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Republic of Tatarstan held a Polymer Day. It was devoted to the problems of import substitution of polymer products in the cable industry. This event was attended by representatives of more than 40 major manufacturers of polymers, compounds and their customers, cable enterprises in Russia. By tradition, the Polymer Day was passed in the communication platform format involving presentations, discussions, and open dialogue. Participants noted that the share of localisation in the cable industry remains high, and has good expansion prospects for import substitution: the Russian cable industry consumes annually about 260,000 tonnes of polymers and compounds, including 45,500 tonnes of imported polymers.

Problematic issues are the shortage of basic polymers, the reduction of export duties for raw materials, which are further used by processors for the production of import-substituting products, and the lack of up-to-date equipment of Russian origin required by polymer processors.