Reform tsar struggles to take Russia into nanoworld
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian economic reform architect Anatoly Chubais hopes to marshal oligarch investment into establishing Russia as a world leader in high-tech nanoscience, helping wean his country off dependency on raw material sales.
Chubais has a reputation for getting seemingly impossible things done. Skeptics, however, say Russian science is hindered by bureaucracy and by a lack of small companies capable of translating scientific ideas quickly into commercial production.
As economist, Chubais presided over the selloff of Soviet state property that produced the country's super-wealthy oligarchs and as a politician helped revive Boris Yeltsin's popularity to win a second term as president in 1996. More recently, he dismantled and privatized power generation.
Chubais sees the economic crisis as a "unique chance" for Russia to break away from its dependency on oil and gas, with its fluctuating revenues, into the new world of nanoscience.
"I will tell you a secret," Chubais told a news conference. "I have at least two or three meetings a week with our Forbes list of oligarchs. Half of those I have spoken with have decided to channel their money into the innovative economy."
Russia, which inherited a strong scientific tradition from the Soviet Union, has gradually been losing its edge as many prominent scientists have emigrated abroad, seeking better pay and a more favorable environment for research.
Chubais now heads Rusnano, a state corporation blessed with $6 billion of budget funds and charged with achieving $30 billion worth of production with the use of nanotechnologies by 2015. He says the sector is a place to invest after the crisis.
"Those who saved their money, regained consciousness, wiped the sweat off their foreheads, where will they invest next?" Chubais said at the second nanotechnologies fair in Moscow.
"In oil? At $150 per barrel, of course. At $70? No."
PERPETUUM MOBILE
Rusnano defines the nanotechnology projects it is prepared to finance as involving technology that handles substances at a nanolevel, or a scale of about one billionth of a meter, to inject new qualities to the substance.
Even Chubais admits his drive stumbles over the lack of business acumen prevalent among Russian scientists, most of whom were educated in Soviet-era institutions and have little or no familiarity with the basic rules of investment.
"There are too many authors of ideas. Our phones burst with calls from people who say they have invented a new perpetuum mobile," Chubais said. Only a handful of those were able to draft a proper business plan, he added.
Rusnano's guide, 'Seven steps to create a business', made reference to books such as 'Business plan for dummies' for potential applicants and introduced basic investment concepts such as "cash flow" or "rate of return."
The corporation says it receives over 40 applications every month. But since its creation at the height of the oil-fueled economic boom in 2007, Rusnano has approved financing for only 36 projects, worth $1.7 billion.
NOT ONLY LIGHT IN THE WINDOW
Thomas Fries, president of Germany's FRT, which manufactures high-precision measurement tools, wants to set up a production line and run a research lab in Russia. He has applied to Rusnano for funding.
"We started talking with Rosnano one-and-a-half years ago and everyone was very keen, but up to today nothing has happened. I don't really know the reason," he said, standing in the middle of the German pavilion, one of the fair's biggest.
Investors say the main hurdle is the lack of small and medium-sized enterprises able to put ideas into production. The Russian part of the fair, represented mostly by large state firms or Soviet-era research centers, served as evidence.
"You don't need $5 billion to develop an idea. You need the right partners. There are hardly any small and medium-sized enterprises in Russia that can help scientists do that," said Frank Sicking from Germany's VDI Technology Center.
The younger generation of Russians, inspired by success stories such as Finnish technology firm Optogan, founded by a group of young Russian researchers, is aware that the world outside Russia may offer brighter opportunities.
"If there is money in the United States, it will be made there. If there is money in Russia, it will be made in Russia," said Moscow university student Nikolai Klyenov, who developed a high-sensitive broadband detector with a group of friends.
"I would not say that Rusnano is the only light in the window," he said.
(Writing by Gleb Bryanski)
