Potanin spoke about finalizing Nornickel's strategy

The Russian company Nornickel has finalized its strategy on important points for the country in order to gain support for tighter cooperation with friendly countries. The company's president Vladimir Potanin told RBC in an interview published on December 14.

It is about, among other things, preserving the tax base, jobs, as well as competencies.

"We have somewhat adjusted the strategy I talked about in the spring to get more tightly involved with Chinese partners to produce something together. To go deeper into cooperation, we needed the support of the state, the government, all the way up to the president. Trying to get this support, we took into account in our strategy those points that were important for the state," the businessman explained.

Thus, in addition to production abroad, Nornickel is developing production in Russia. For example, the volume of smelting capacity in Norilsk is not only maintained, but also increased through the expansion of the Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant.

"And we also continue to ensure the utilization of those enterprises that work in cooperation with us, such as the Krasnoyarsk Non-Ferrous Metals Plant. By adjusting our program in this way and responding to the challenges that the government pointed out to us, we managed to get support," Potanin stressed.

Commenting on the possibility of new Western sanctions against the company and the BRICS countries against the background of increased cooperation with China, the head of Nornickel noted that the larger the association, the more difficult it is to exert sanctions pressure on it, because it is becoming more and more self-sufficient.

"One of the problems of our country is that we have, to put it bluntly, a small market. And so any implementation stories and scientific and technical ones are complicated by the fact that we need to necessarily involve some other markets. So uniting within BRICS or otherwise opening markets for each other is a very important task for us. And the bigger such an association is, the more difficult it is to dictate terms to it," he said.

Potanin also added that sharp rhetoric from the West, on the contrary, stimulates and accelerates such processes. All this, in his opinion, may lead to the fact that these sanctions will simply stop being paid attention to.

"When one by one they shoot back - it's like one thing. But when a whole crowd, you'll get tired of fighting them with sanctions methods," he said.

Potanin reminded that BRICS, unlike the EU and NATO, is a voluntary association. This, on the one hand, can somewhat slow down the processes, but, on the other hand, there is a chance to get a potentially more stable structure.

"And finally, the third consideration is that we cannot avoid the international division of labor. It is necessary, no one has canceled it. We can't produce everything, we can't import everything. Therefore, we just need to build chains, in which we used to participate and in which we found ourselves dependent on Western partners, with those countries that at least declare that they will not abandon their obligations," he said.

In general, in the strategic plan, Potanin believes that in the long term the BRICS countries will be able to work out acceptable rules, including in the field of settlements and international trade. In this regard, Potanin believes that now it is necessary to use the possibilities of bilateral, clearing relations, to a greater extent to introduce settlements related to digital financial assets.

"I don't like being tied to crypto. I like it better if they were still digital financial assets. Because they are tied to real goods and services. Crypto has an ambiguous meaning after all. If it substitutes for national currencies, I don't think any regulator is going to like it. It's hardly a good thing. And if it doesn't substitute for national currencies, then how is this crypto different from any other commodity, from gold, for example? Bitcoin behaves in a very similar way to gold. So it's more like that kind of treasure, treasure is more like that. And the regulator is against it being used for settlement," concluded the president of Nornickel.