Semenuyk Still Dreaming Of Foreign Conquest As SPF Releases 11M Results

Yesterday the head of the State Property Fund (SPF), Valentina Semenuyk, announced plans to place several companies up for privatization in 2007 on foreign exchanges in Tokyo, New York, London and Moscow. In related news, the SPF’s press service announced that as of December 1, it had brought revenues of USD 85.7 mln to the state budget from privatization, a far cry from the USD 385 mln the SPF was supposed to have attracted by the end of November as part of the 2006 privatization plan. Nick Piazza: The SPF’s poor showing in 2006 makes the government’s goal of receiving more than USD 2 bln from privatizations in 2007 look far-fetched and following the misadventures surrounding Semenuyk’s earlier plan of placing the loss-making Teksterno in London, her talk of placing companies in New York and Tokyo sounds almost comical.