Russian innovation is running out of puff

by Alina Lobzina on 12/05/2011

The Moscow News

If you’re looking for innovation in Russia, it’s more likely to be lighting up a cigarette than blazing a trail into space, according to the Higher School of Economics.

Tobacco companies have become the nation’s leaders in new technology, leaving telecoms and oil refining choking on their smoke.

Ironically, President Medvedev’s innovation-hungry government is also intent on stubbing out cigarette sales.

But they will need to find a new way to spark the country’s boffins into life in other fields, with research showing that less than 10 per cent of Russian firms are “innovatively active”.

Elsewhere, smaller economies in Eastern Europe score 20-40 per cent on the same scale.

Global concept, local gains

Four in ten tobacco companies apply new technologies to their everyday work, thanks mostly to their links to multinational corporations.

And that investment comes despite constant restrictions on advertising tobacco, plans to raise duty on cigarettes and proposed legislation to enforce more no-smoking zones in Russia.

Anatoly Vereschagin, the head of communications at JTI, told Vedomosti the company invested nearly $380 million dollars over the last three years to modernise the production process.

Making connections

Telecoms manufacturers come second in Russia’s list of innovators, with just over a third of companies introducing new ideas.

And aerospace, a source of national pride in Soviet times, comes third with 33.6 per cent, followed by oil refining on 32.7 per cent.

But that’s well behind other economies, where innovative technologies run close to 70 per cent.

Germany tops the charts ahead of Canada and New Zealand, while neighbours Finland (55.4 per cent) and Estonia (55.1 per cent) also score highly.

Russian mortgage rates falling

by Andy Potts on 29/06/2011

The Moscow News

Mortgages in Moscow are getting cheaper – but falling interest rates will not solve the market’s problems on their own.

The HMLA, the agency which deals with mortgage rates, has announced plans to cut costs for borrowers by up to 2.6 per cent, bringing the lowest lending rates down to 8.9 per cent.

It hopes to see 15-20 per cent more people take out ruble-denominated loans to buy property by reducing the level of repayments and requiring smaller up-front deposits.

More work needed

While experts agree that action is needed to tackle high interest rates – in Western markets loans are often half the price of the Russian counterparts – this is not the only issue.

Alla Moroz, director of the real estate sales department at housebuilder Etalon Invest, told The Moscow News that “inflated interest rates” were the main issue, but added that banks needed to do more to promote home loans.

“For a long time after the crisic Russian banks opted against mortgages on new buildings, and when they returned to the market they demanded existing real estate as collateral,” she said. “In addition many banks required extra guarantees which did not encourage the mass spread of mortgages.”

She also called for Russian banks to learn from the example of their Western peers and adopt a more understanding approach to debt restructuring.

“For example, if the borrower suffers reduced circumstances but had always made payments in good faith, the bank can renegotiate the contract to keep the customer solvent.”

More transparency in the system could help with this, she believes, welcoming the small steps which are being made towards sharing information about applicants’ long-term credit history.

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The sphere of my scientific interest.

I graduated from (указать название университета или института) in (указать год окончания).

Being a third-year student, I got interested in the problem of …

I studied the literature on the problem, made different experiments and came to the conclusion that it is a very important and urgent problem nowadays.

The theme of my graduation paper is …

In my graduation paper I do research in the field of … (указать область исследования)

It is a comparatively new branch of science that studies (что изучает новая отрасль науки) …

Major developments include advances in (указать область науки) …

The branches of science contributing a lot to progress in my field of science are (смежные науки) …

At present I study the problem of (проблема в настоящее время) …

My scientific supervisor is professor …

In solving our problem we follow the hypothesis that …

Over the past few years the interest in the problem has been due to the fact that (чем обусловлен интерес к проблеме) …

(Имя ученого) was the first to underline / define / the problem.

There is a lot of literature on the problem of my research but it is out of date.

But I want to add that many aspects of the problem still remain unsolved…

My task is : a) to define …

        b) to prove …

        c) to analyze …

At present my research is concentrated on …

And now I want to take a post-graduate course to continue my research work.

Вопросы к теме:

What is the field of your research?

What are your reasons for talking a post-graduate course?

Can you name outstanding researchers in your field of science?

Do achievements in your branch of research influence everyday life? In what way?

Have you ever participated in international conferences? What are the results?

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Д. филол. н., проф.,

Зав. кафедрой иностранных яз.                                     О.П. Рябко  

преподаватель                                                                 Л.Н. Литовченко