At the mercy of private capital

In Russia there is no uniform federal legislation which would regulate functioning of industrial parks. Moreover, each region of the Russian Federation or almost every region plans to develop or has already developed such platforms and at the same time provides the residents with certain benefits.

According to the Association of Industrial Parks, today the Leningrad region is the leader among all regions of the Russian Federation in terms of the amount of industrial parks already created or being at various stages of development. Besides, the authorities of the region expect that development of industrial parks will be considerably influenced by the law On Measures of State Support for Establishing and Developing Industrial Parks in the Leningrad Region, the bill will be again considered in the autumn.
In accordance with the law, organizations dealing with development of industrial parks can receive state support such as tax benefits and reduced ground rate. These benefits are the same as those for investors in the region: corporate tax rate is reduced to 13.5% and wealth tax rate – to 0%. Tax benefits will be granted for 4 years, at that, an organization can choose 4 year period within 6 years after receiving industrial park status.
In the meantime, officials are waiting for investors’ initiative in the development of industrial parks.
As market participants say, the most developed industrial parks are "Marino" and “Greenstate”, however, the cost of land there is, respectively, the highest. These are private projects, although "Marino" is being implemented with the support of the authorities. Meanwhile, there are no examples of implementation of government projects of this level on public land in St. Petersburg or in the Leningrad region.
To date, investors’ interest in the implementation of the industrial parks is not very high. Recovery rates are still lower than in other segments of commercial real estate, and the rules of the game are not laid down; this segment is very young for the market.
Experts believe that the developers in this sphere need certain preferences based on public-private partnership.
Svetlana Berezina, Deputy director of the consulting department at Colliers International in St. Petersburg, concludes: "Few dozen of industrial parks’ projects have been announced in recent years in the region. These statements are often of declarative nature; developers have rejected some projects.
In view of the fact that the term "industrial park" is new and vague (the share of production function in the industrial park is not defined and there is no legal regulation in this area), this concept is often used for marketing purposes (for example, by owners of large tracts of agricultural land and by the owners of unused industrial sites)."
Ms. Berezina thinks that if the project is not provided with engineering and transport facilities already at that time when it has been announced, it means there is a high probability that it will not be implemented. "The developer of the industrial park might not have enough financing, as well as the “paper period” of site preparation and the project agreement might take too long," she says.

Opinion:

Vladimir Skigin, chairman of the boards of directors of managing company "Satellit Development"
- Industrial real estate segment has to be one of the priorities of the region as a key factor in its successful economy. Today, when there is a deficiency of prepared industrial sites in the city and in the region, many large foreign companies have refused to deploy their plants locally, because of the existence of more attractive conditions in other regions; the industrial real estate segment development is relevant now more than ever.