Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Center

The Russian government, facing several more years of budget deficits, outlined plans to slightly loosen state control over the economy, aiming to raise as much as $29 billion by selling minority stakes in state companies.

Yesterday the country's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said: "We will sell significant stakes in state companies on the market. We plan to keep controlling stakes." The sales, slated to take place over the next three years, would be the biggest unloading of Russian state assets since the mass privatizations of the 1990s. But unlike those sales, which were aimed at slashing state control and creating a new class of private owners, the current plans envision selling only minority stakes.