MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. International institutions put Russia to the first place in Europe but this is not the cause to "settle" at such position, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Q&A session combined with his annual press conference.
"International financial and economic institutions put Russia to the first place in Europe by the economic volume and to the fourth place globally by the purchasing power parity. China, the United States and India are ahead of us. We outpaced Germany as early as in the last year and left Japan behind this year. However, this is not an indicator for us to ‘fall asleep’ and settle. Everything is developing, everything is proactively moving forward," the president said.
"If the Euro zone ‘fell asleep,’ then there are other centers of global development, they are also progressing. The situation is also changing in the Euro zone and in the United States. Therefore, we need to keep the momentum gain, to change qualities in our economy," Putin noted.
The industry is growing at large and by individual industries, he Russian leader said. "We have industry growth standing at 4.4%, and 8.1% for the processing sector. It is even higher when broken down by branches of industry," Putin noted.