Sberbank to open credit line for a shipbuilding company.

ST.PETERSBURG, June 19 (Itar-Tass) - Sberbank will open a credit line
worth 140 billion roubles for the Unified Shipbuilding Corporation to
enable it to implement shipbuilding projects under a contract signed on
the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on
Saturday.
Sberbank's President German Gref and Roman Trotsenko, the head of the
Unified Shipbuilding Corporation, signed the document that will stimulate
the development of long-term and mutually beneficial cooperation.
Sberbank will finance the Unified Shipbuilding Corporation and
enterprises affiliated in it, including state contracts. It will credit
projects of military-technological cooperation, the construction of
surface ships and submarines for the Navy, commercial shipbuilding, the
development of continental shelf and the world market of sea carriages.
In the meantime, St. Petersburg will receive almost 100 billion
roubles worth of investments according to agreements signed at the St.
Petersburg Economic Forum that ended on Saturday.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko told journalists that 97
billion roubles worth of investments would flow into the city's economy in
the next few years thanks to the signed contracts.
She added that the government of St Petersburg had signed 10
contracts. The foundation was laid down for two automobile plants and the
pharmaceutical enterprise Novartis.
"I am very pleased that we actively advance the pharmaceutical
cluster. We will have to create research centres in the process of its
development. We need to get innovative products," Matviyenko emphasized.
The governor also said that a new shipbuilding yard that will be able
to produce any ships would be built in St. Petersburg.
A number of companies will participate in educational programs,
Matviyenko emphasized.

.Kyrgyz law on elections needs to be finalized.

VENICE, June 19 (Itar-Tass) - Experts of the Venetian Commission of
the Council of Europe believe that Kyrgyzstan's law on elections approved
by the country's parliament needs to be finalized.
"In its present form the bill imposes excessive restrictions on the
population's voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly," the Venetian
Commission noted in a resolution adopted at its plenary meeting on
Saturday.
The commission's members said those restrictions contradict the
existing European standards. Besides, they believe that a seven-percent
threshold for getting into parliament should also be removed.
The Kyrgyz parliament passed a new law on elections in May this year.
It changed, among other things, the principle of forming electoral
commissions and voters' lists. Kyrgyzstan's interim President Roza
Otunbayeva has vetoed the bill this week.
At present, the country's election legislation hasn't been brought in
line with the new Constitution. Observers believe that this factor may
become a serious obstacle to holding presidential elections late this year.

-0-fil/