However, the same negative economic developments also mean that the government is increasingly strapped for cash, giving it an incentive to speed up privatisation as an alternative to raising taxes, cutting spending or exhausting fiscal reserves. "Next year we will seriously change our approach to privatisation," Siluanov said in the interview on Rossiya-24 television. "The Russian government is preparing proposals to sell stakes in large companies." He added that "in the first instance" the state oil firm Rosneft was being prepared for privatisation. Bashneft , a smaller oil company that was renationalised last year, is also under consideration.
Plans to sell a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft were first announced in 2013 and approved by the government a year ago, but progress has been minimal. Rosneft is presently 69.5 percent state-owned. While the finance ministry is eager to accelerate privatisation to boost state revenues, opponents - among them Rosneft's CEO Igor Sechin - have repeatedly argued that privatisation should be delayed until stock prices are significantly higher.