MOSCOW, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Sergei
Kiriyenko was due on Thursday to meet foreign banks to clarify
the crisis monetary measures which the government took this
week, including an overhaul of the debt market, bankers said.
Rair Simonyan, president of Morgan Stanley's Russia
operations, said the meeting would begin at 1400 GMT at the
government White House building.
One of the main items on the agenda will be the
government's planned overhaul of the short-term debt market,
worth between $40 billion and $45 billion, which analysts say
is some two thirds of outstanding domestic debt.
"We have a list of issues we want to clarify, we have
prepared moreover our strategies for fixed income," Simonyan
told Reuters.
The meeting comes amid worries foreign investors are going
to be discriminated against in the planned swap of short-term,
GKO t-bill and OFZ bonds for longer-term paper, aimed at
relieving the strain on the state's budget.
Investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) said
preliminary details of the swap leaked on Tuesday would
discriminate against foreign investors, who would get less
money back from their Russian debt investments than Russians.
Western bankers and analysts have said any debt conversion
which discriminates against foreign banks could shut the door
to Russia on future Western finance.
Simonyan said that top debt negotiator Anatoly Chubais
would be at the meeting as well as other leading central bank
and finance ministry officials.
"The questions are more or less typical for all investors,"
he added.
Deputy Prime Minister Boris Fyodorov, who is also the head
of the national tax service, was due to separately meet senior
officials Russian oil companies, a senior tax office official
said.
"We are going to discuss the payments of taxes, as another
meeting of the interdepartmental commission is scheduled for
next week," Vladimir Popov, the head of the department in
charge of reclaiming tax arrears, told Reuters.
The commission, which regulates the access of companies to
oil pipelines and terminals, is headed by the First Deputy Fuel
and Energy Minister Viktor Ott. It normally meets once a month
Earlier this month the commission cut access to export
pipelines in August to SIDANKO by 223,000 tonnes and to
Russia's eighth biggest oil producer, Onako <ORNB.RTS>, by
37,000 tonnes for failure to pay taxes in time.
((Patrick Lannin, Moscow Newsroom, +7095 941-8520
moscow.newsroom@reuters.com))
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