New provision on port charges to come into effect by November 1, 2007
New provision on port charges may come into effect by November 1, 2007, Yury Parfeonov, Director General of Rosmorport FSUE, said yesterday at the press conference in Saint Petersburg. According to him, the document is still under consideration at the Federal Tax Service (FTS). He reminded that the first planned term for this document to be issued by FTS was July 2006. According to estimations of Rosmorport, new method of port charges collection will raise annual volume of port charges to RUR 10 billion. In 2005 it totaled RUR 7.8 billion including RUR 2.7 billion in Saint Petersburg. Money raised from port charges are used for repair of hydraulic structures. Parfeonov says lack of financing of such costs total RUR 600 million in the port of Saint Petersburg today. He also added that port charges rates have not been raised from 1995 in Russia. At the same time they are based on dollar rate.