Russia should not fully privatize its oil and gas industry in the near future as it is too monopolized, with the attendant social risks that entails, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday.
"We have state firms with state participation and control - Gazprom, and Rosneft, and they play an important role today," said Putin. "On one hand they say they should be privatized. Like (Mikhail) Prokhorov for example, he's talked about it. But we can't guarantee the main thing - we don't have demonopolization. If we just give it to someone, it will be very hard to control it and they'll jack up prices and so on," said Putin at a meeting with political analysts.
Putin singled out Rosneft for its role in solving problems in supplying vehicle fuels at lower prices. "We need to give credit to all those firms and private ones too. They meet up and talk, but there won't be a leader like Rosneft in solving these problems - it would be a different story," Putin added.
"All in good time," Putin said. "Today we shouldn't rapidly privatize everything in this sector and even more so shouldn't nationalize everything. That way there will be no development," he said.
