IBM Corp has denied that it has any firm agreement with the Russian government following a memo issued last month by Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar stating that the government had approved an IBM proposal to start the volume assembly of Personal System products in Zelenograd, near Moscow. They might be his terms but IBM has yet to reach any agreement, says a spokesman for IBM Moscow. The memo, the contents of which were published in Inzhenernaya Gazeta, states that production is to take place at the state concern Nauchnyj Tsentr research centre in Zelenograd. It says up to 50,000 computers will be produced there annually by 1994, 40% of the components will be of Russian origin and domestically assembled IBM PS/2 and PS/1 personal computers will be sold for roubles. In January 1991 Michael Armstrong, then chairman of IBM World Trade, met Mikail Gorbachev, then Soviet President, and they agreed in principle to the large scale manufacture of IBM PS products in Russia, and Gaidar’s memo is simply another episode in these marathon negotiations.
