Moscow has asked the Spanish telecommunications company Amper SA to increase its industrial presence in the Soviet Union and is sending an envoy to Spain this month to boost negotiations Soviet ideas include extending Amper’s phone manufacturing plant in Telur and expanding the range of Amper products made in the Soviet Union, beginning with the production of private telephone exchanges. The envoy will also seek to interest Amper in buying a minority share in an old Moscow arms factory and converting it into a telecommunications factory. If Amper doesn’t want to take a stake, the Soviets hope it will agree to manage the factory. Also, spurred on by the successes of last year, when 150,000 telephones were manufactured in Telur, the Soviet Ministry of Telecommunications wants Amper to engineer an eight-fold increase in production at the plant, taking capacity to 1.2m phones a year. Amper, however, is treading carefully, because of the shortage of hard currency to pay for all this. But the company does believe that now is the time to break into the Soviet market if it is to get a head start on other multinationals. And it complains that the Spanish Government is not providing enough financial support for it to take advantage of the offer.
