Russia’s Prime Minister during Thursday’s session of the World Economic Forum visited a round table meeting with foreign investors, where he discussed development of the economy in the world crisis. Medvedev said that Russia still had time to get ready for another energy revolution, where oil and gas would not be the planet’s major priority.
During the breakfast, investors and experts shared the view that within next three-five years the annual growth of the world and Russian economies would make three percent, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta reports. “I also share the view about the three percent, but do hope for more,” Medvedev said. “Clearly, three percent is an average, which is possible this year both for the Russian Federation and for the world. However, we should be trying to make the growth bigger.”
The Komsomolskaya Pravda says optimism of the kind is rather vague. Russia still depends on prices of its natural resources. “We keep asking ourselves: what will happen to this country if oil and gas prices slump,” the prime minister said. “We should decide, what we shall be able to present to the world as the paradigm is different. No doubt, this will happen. Every 50-70 years, the world experiences an energy revolution. In such a case hydrocarbons would not be the planet’s major priority. We should get ready for it. Without any hysteria, though. We should be getting revenues from them, but get ready for the future.”
Other basic image problems investors see in the Russian Federation are authority tendencies in the political sphere, on one hand, and hidden inner political problems, on the other hand, the Kommersant writes. Meanwhile, Arkady Dvorkovich said a day earlier: one of the objectives the country has in Davos is presentation of options for major infrastructure investments in the Russian Federation. First of all, those are projects for the current year – rapid railroads of RZD, grids of the future United Grid Company, and new energy facilities.