SOCHI, September 19. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said that closing the markets for exports is likely to bring about negative consequences for Russia but it will make an attempt to use the current situation for developing its own sectors of the economy.

In an interview with ITAR-TASS Medvedev said that sanctions could pose a risk for Russia to lag behind technologically. 

“The more closed the situation is getting, the less competition appear,” he said.

Medvedev said that “to create sterile conditions [for Russian producers] even under the motto of import substitution is wrong.”

“In this way the world was created: amid absence of competition, quality starts to go down and the Soviet Union, Russia or any other country could not escape it - the market closes and the competition goes down,” he said.

“Why the world fights with protectionism?” the prime minister asked rhetorically. “Due to these reasons among others.”

The Russian prime minister said that Moscow never backed up sanctions.

“All restrictions that [the West] introduced [against Russia] forced us to take not very good steps,” Medvedev said referring to the Russian ban on food imports from certain countries.

“If it happened so, we should benefit by increasing the sectors where we are capable to ensure high quality,” he said. “It can be achieved although the markets should not be closed, if possible.”

Medvedev said that the situation on the food market is “a bit easier.”

“The markets are not closed at all: European goods are being withdrawn but Asian, Latin American injected,” he said adding that these goods “are cost-competitive with ours.”

Along with this, machines and mechanisms are quite a problem.

“We are hopeful that we will be able to manage the situation — to give money for the technologies aimed at import substituting that will be competitive,” he said adding that “it is a task for the government”.