Britain's specialty in banking and trade finance stems from colonialism, and the need to facilitate bartering of minerals and commodities from lands as far away as Zimbabwe and Hong Kong, a legacy now exploited by the developing nations Britain once tried to conquer.
Although some opponents say the language is written so loosely that it could permit bartering and private financing, many critics say the bill, if passed, would be a hollow victory for farmers.
Mr. Sevastyanov and his staff handed out brochures suggesting novel financing arrangements, including barter and forgiving state debt.
With its odd mix of advanced capitalism and developing-world economics, the country is successfully luring people who hitherto dealt only in cash or barter to the world of formal finance.
He brought the idea of a barter-based pension fund to Dan Galai, a finance professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an investment banker.
The commercial barter services company will use the proceeds to finance its continued growth through acquisitions.
Although the company claims impressively if true to have forsworn barter, which made up 80% of its turnover a year ago, finances (including details of the main shareholders) are still murky.So far, Avtovaz's snooty managers have spurned foreign approaches (although there are well-advanced talks with General Motors about assembling cars under licence).
For others, aided by the same technology that has rarefied finance and made the flow of capital so remote, bartering is making a thundering comeback.
Few banks were willing to finance these transactions, but among the few that issued letters of credit to back barter deals were Bankers Trust of New York and First Security Bank of Utah.
It took the human society a few thousand years to evolve from the barter economy to the credit based economy, while it only took less than three decades for Internet finance from primitive e-commerce transactions to credit-product based electronic transactions.
