Commodity exchange returns to Russia. Kudrin does not mind. March 30, 2009. 20:23. VESTI, Russia TV.
 

The Novosibirsk zoo exchanged two lynxes for a rare white tiger from the Paris zoo. This turned out to be twice cheaper than buying the tiger for money. The crisis makes bartering a more and more widespread way to get the necessaries or pay the debts. Both large industrial enterprises and simple Internet users barter a lot today. What can one exchange 200 bulldozers and 10 cans of pickled mushrooms for?
 

Honey seller Natalya Nikitenko has finally managed to wash her car. She paid for the service with bees’ products. “I have signed an undertaking for 410 rubles, to which amount they will buy honey from me,” Natalya explains.

Real goods, virtual money. The settlements are cleared through a bartering Internet club. You can swap, for instance, a bike for a TV set, a binocular for a kettle, 10 cans of pickled mushrooms for a wheelchair or manicure. “There are most common household requirements – to have hair cut, to fix teeth, to replace electric wiring in the flat,” says Sergey Vagayev, the head of the bartering club.
For the car service station in Irkutsk bartering is of course not a solution: the number of customers has fallen down many times, but at least the workers will drink tea and eat honey for lunch. “The crisis has somewhat slapped our company,” says Ivan Shelkovnikov, an entrepreneur, “there is no work per se, but bartering is working – we can do something and get goods or services in exchange. This is a normal scheme.”
The lack of cash brings large enterprises to these schemes, too. In Orenburg bartering is now regulated by the regional administration. The Buzuluksky mechanical plant, which stands out of action for 3 months in a row, has receivables from Rostselmash for radiators. The plants negotiated that now the latter pays Buzuluksky with spare parts for harvesters, while the Region buys them for cash – for its agricultural companies. The plant is working again. “When such small operations returned to a bartering scheme, the plant eventually received the cash,” says Sergey Grachev, the first deputy prime minister of the Orenburg Region. 

In the meantime, the Chelyabinsk tractor plant refuses to exchange it products by bartering. 200 bulldozers wait for being shipped to Belarus, which offers to pay with their MAZs, but one cannot pay wages with trucks, the plant needs cash inflow.
“The blood needs to flow through the vessels and do it continuously anyway, and no bartering will be ever able to replace normal monetary circulation, normal credit facility provisioning to enterprises,” assures Viktor Khristenko, the Russian minister of industry and trade, “that is why I think that the building up of barter schemes pose a threat to real functioning of the economy, because they are followed by the fantastically complex problem of settlement of unpaid accounts, which would be impossible to estimate at a future date.”
Nevertheless, the Russian finance ministry’s position is that bartering should not be fought against. Minor swapping does not affect the state economy, while major swapping is regulated by the legislation and pays taxes – not with tractors, but with real rubles. “Bartering schemes always exist in the economy. They are legal,” states Alexei Kudrin, the deputy prime minister and the minister of finance of Russia, “there are hard times, when such transactions become widespread. Today I see no hazard to the economy.”

For someone, bartering was also preferable to monetary settlements. In Russian zoos a euro is 100 times cheaper than a ruble. A while ago, this exchange rate was used at swapping two lynxes for a rare white tiger with the Paris wildcats zoo. “Here, a lynx costs 5 to 7 thousand euro, a white tiger – 35 to 40 thousand. This is very beneficial for us,” says Rostislav Shilo, the director of the Novosibirsk zoo, “bartering or swapping is used by all zoos. I’ve been working for 47 years and swapping for 47 years.”
Moreover, tigers do not care how and with whom they were swapped. All they need is meat in the dish. Given the barter, even predators are not afraid of the “savage grin of capitalism.”

http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=269383&cid=1