Drought Damage Worsens
Drought wiped out about 3.2 million hectares of grain in six areas along the Volga River, the Agriculture Ministry said Tuesday, increasing its previous estimate by about 60 percent.
An emergency was declared in the Samara and Orenburg regions and Bashkortostan republic and will be extended to the Volgograd and Saratov regions and Tatarstan republic, the ministry said.
The ministry this month cut its forecast for the harvest by 6 percent to 85 million tons because of the drought. It estimated the damage at 2 million hectares on July 7.
(Bloomberg)

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Turkey Reviews Nuclear Bid
ISTANBUL — Turkey will complete within two months its review of a bid by Atomstroiexport to build the country’s first nuclear power plant, a year after the company won the tender, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said Tuesday.
The Cabinet will receive a report in coming days on the tender, in which Atomstroiexport and its partners Inter RAO and Turkey’s Park Teknik were the only bidders, Yildiz told CNN Turk on Tuesday.
“One way or the other” it will be finalized, he said.
(Reuters)

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Grain Firm Sues Egyptians
CAIRO — Russian grain company Rosinteragroservis, or RIAS, said Tuesday that it had started two arbitration cases at the London-based Grain and Feed Trade Association against a private Egyptian grain importer.
A RIAS official said grain importer Egyptian Traders had failed to pay RIAS Trading, a Swiss-based subsidiary of RIAS, for two Russian wheat shipments.
The Egyptian firm could not be reached for comment.
(Reuters)

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Coal Miner’s Output Down
Coal miner Raspadskaya said Tuesday that first-half raw coal production fell 4 percent from the year-earlier period to 4.2 million tons.
Raspadskaya, part owned by steelmaker Evraz Group, said in a statement that it planned to increase domestic sales in the second half of the year to come close to matching last year’s sales volume total.
(Reuters)

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For the Record
The export duty for crude may be increased to $222 per ton, or $30.29 per barrel, on Aug. 1 from $212.60 per ton in July, Alexander Sakovich, deputy head of the Finance Ministry’s customs payments department, said Tuesday. (Bloomberg)

Russian factory gate prices, an early indicator of inflation, dropped 9.4 percent in June, the most on record, as the manufacturing slump pushed down costs, the State Statistics Service said Tuesday.  (Bloomberg)

Gazprom will pay 931 million rubles ($28.4 million) for the rights to develop three Sakhalin-3 blocks and the West Kamchatka shelf in the Sea of Okhotsk, Interfax reported Tuesday.(MT)

Sedmoi Kontinent said Tuesday that its second-quarter sales rose 14 percent to 12.3 billion rubles ($380 million). (Bloomberg)

Magnit said Tuesday that June retail sales rose 28 percent in comparison with the previous year to 13.4 billion rubles ($409 million).(Bloomberg)