President Gives a Reprieve To Voucher

The privatization voucher, first scheduled to expire in December, then on July 1, has been given another reprieve.President Boris Yeltsin has signed a decree allowing limited use of vouchers until July 31, while Mayor Yury Luzhkov has announced a new program for Moscow that extends the voucher's validity within city limits to Jan. 1, 1995.Between them, the two measures will delay the second stage of privatization, in which companies would be sold for cash to the highest bidder rather than for vouchers, which were distributed free to every Russian citizen 20 months ago.Yeltsin's decree, signed Tuesday, allows enterprises to accept vouchers at closed privatization auctions, where only workers can purchase shares. Factory directors will be responsible for collecting all the vouchers before the July deadline.Luzhkov's program, called Check-Moscow, enables Muscovites to exchange vouchers for special certificates that they can then invest in Moscow factories and city-issued securities."Far from all citizens have used their vouchers already, though they have been urged to do so," said presidential spokesman Alexander Orfyonov. "Besides, the president has allowed Moscow to go ahead with its own program, and it would be wrong to let Moscow become too special."According to Larisa Chernyshova, an official at the State Property Committee, which issued the vouchers, Yeltsin's decree is designed to give defense industry workers a chance to acquire shares in their factories, which the Russian Committee for Defense Industry has been unwilling to put up for auction.But Chernyshova said she did not rule out the possibility that Yeltsin postponed the voucher's demise in a concession to directors who want to maintain control over their enterprises. She said many factory directors were eager to put off this second stage of the privatization program. "The managers have the right to do whatever they want with the factory until it's privatized," Chernyshova said. "It's a situation where the more you steal, the richer you get."The further we put off the second stage of privatization, the more chances there are that there will be nothing left to privatize."Chernyshova used as an example the manager of a factory in Kaliningrad who had rented out most of the factory's office space and even started a small restaurant on the premises. "Privatization will be the end of his life in paradise," Chernyshova said. It was not immediately clear whether Luzhkov's program would supercede Yeltsin's decree within city limits.A release circulated by Luzhkov's press service Wednesday said Moscow branches of Sberbank would accept Muscovites' vouchers for safekeeping while issuing special certificates to be invested in city property by next year. But Chernyshova said Yeltsin's decree also had jurisdiction over Moscow factories that city authorities have refused to recognize as privatized according to the federal program."It gives a chance to those factories that couldn't register their privatization deals because of Luzhkov's tricks," she said. "Their workers had been left with nothing before this decree."A spokesman for the mayor's office refused to specify which Moscow factories and companies would be subject to privatization under Luzhkov's plan.The mayor's press service said in a statement Wednesday that the Moscow plan "can by no means be interpreted as extending the life of the Russian voucher in Moscow," since the city would, on July 10, begin issuing its own certificates to replace the vouchers.But since vouchers can be exchanged for the certificates until Jan. 1, 1995, vouchers will retain a market value in Moscow until then. And according to the rules of closed privatization adopted by many factories, a worker can invest any number of vouchers at auction, which means that Yeltsin's decree will preserve a market for vouchers in the rest of Russia until July 31.Executives at the Russian Raw Materials and Commodities Exchange, the country's premier venue for trade in vouchers, did not know whether they would be able to continue trading after the old July 1 deadline."The situation is unclear so far," said Natalya Belkina, chief expert at the exchange's analytical center.She said the extension of the voucher's term would almost certainly influence its market rate, but doubted the effect would be drastic since Yeltsin's decree only allowed continued use of the privatization checks in closed auctions.In the past week, Belkina said, holders of small consignments of vouchers have been eager to dump them to beat the July 1 deadline. The market rate has dropped from 58,400 rubles ($29) last Thursday to 49,850 rubles Tuesday to 36,000 rubles Wednesday morning.