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Expert calls to increase share of innovative products in Russian economy from 12% to 30%

According to Alexey Kudrin, technological backlog is one of the main challenges Russia should deal with in order to overcome the stagnation in the economy

ST.PETERSBURG, October 24. /TASS/. Russia should increase the share of innovations from 12% to 30% to cope with global challenges, Chairman of the Board of the Center for Strategic Research and Russia’s ex-Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin said on Monday.

Speaking at the first investment forum in St. Petersburg he said:

"The share of innovative products in Russia is about 12%, it should be 30% in order to meet the global challenges," Kudrin said.

Technological backlog is one of the main challenges Russia should deal with in order to overcome the stagnation in the economy, he said.

"Globally, in terms of number of publications in the main scientific fields our share is only 3%. If we speak about the sciences we are traditionally strong in there are only six of them and only in two of them our level is now above the average," Kudrin said. According to him, it concerns physics, space explorations, earth science, mathematics, chemistry and materials and components science.

"At the same time we are lagging behind in the new fields which ensure the breakthrough in the global economy today, so-called industrial revolution 4.0," Kudrin said.

According to him, the recent years saw the decline in the share of innovations, that may be attributed to the reduction of import of technologies and components but in general the causes should be clarified.

Kudrin said that Russia is able to make a breakthrough in scientific and innovation fields with the help of several large scientific hubs in particular in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

"But Moscow and St. Petersburg won’t be enough to make a technological breakthrough, there must be (scientific) centers in other regions as well," Kudrin said adding that about 20-30 hubs are required.