According to governor of the Sverdlovsk region Eduard Rossel, much has been done to reform such a huge country as Russia. The country shifted from the planned economy to the system of market pricing, property privatization was carried out and a system of social protection of the population was set up, the governor said at a plenary session. As a result, the national budget has had a surplus and the gross domestic product has been rising for several years, Rossel noted.
"The basic competitive advantage of modern Russia should be linked to personality and the factors directly ensuring human activities," he said. "Among them are sustained political democracy, education, health protection, the housing sphere, and infrastructure."
"The priority of the national industrial policy should support exports. It is not the export of raw materials but of products with a high added value. Another priority is the establishment of import-replacing production," Rossel emphasized.
Russian Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov said, in turn, that the principle of the average-term program for national economic development was to attain competitiveness of what is called "human capital" of the Russian regions.
In his words, it will make possible creating the conditions for the formation of the middle class and cutting the share of the poor by 2015. The latter category now includes above all not only pensioners but families with children under 14 years and public sector workers, Sharonov said.
"Human capital cannot be raised without reforming education and health protection," he stressed.
Representatives of 17 countries, including former Soviet republics, and 22 regions of Russia took part in the two-day economic forum.
