Today in Russian Business – July 5, 2012

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Russian government will make provisions for a steep drop in oil prices (to as low as $60 a barrel) in its budgetary plans for 2013.  That’s just as well, this article argues, since ‘Russia is little more than an oil state in disguise’.  ‘In the last 10 years Russia has imprisoned nearly three million entrepreneurs’ says the BBC’s Rebecca Kesby: she considers why.  The FT looks at the difference between the oligarchs of the 1990s and today’s tycoons.  The fact that it is reportedly cheaper for prospective service industry workers to purchase counterfeit sanitary certificates than to pay for all the procedures required for mandatory health checks is having a serious effect on staffing quality, says Gennady Onishchenko, Russia’s chief sanitary doctor.  Rolls Royce can apparently look forward to a boom in Russia.   Car exports from the state to fellow customs union members Kazakhstan and Belarus apparently increased dramatically in the first part of this year.  Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works will apparently plough on with their court battle to acquire Australian iron ore miner Flinders Mines.