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Lack of power capacity holding back GDP growth - Putin

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NOVO-OGARYOVO (Moscow Region), October 19 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's president said Thursday that the country's insufficient power generating capacity was proving an obstacle to achieving the national task of doubling GDP from the 2002 level by 2012.

"We have been constantly returning to energy problems recently, and this is no accident, despite some fairly tense work to solve one of the main tasks - ensuring economic growth of approximately by 7% annually, and doubling GDP in 10 years," Vladimir Putin said, addressing an energy conference.

Putin set the ambitious goal of doubling Russia's GDP by 2012 and bringing inflation down to 3% in his annual state-of-the-union address in 2003. According to Russia's statistics service, Russia's GDP was 10.863 trillion rubles in 2002 ($403.38 billion at the current exchange rate).

"Today it is becoming evident to us that the natural limiter in solving this task is the lack of power generating capacity, and the shortfall we are facing today," he said.

"For the last five years, power consumption has risen on average by 2% per year. The data I have points to a jump of 4.8% in the last nine months, and in some regions, power consumption levels are rising 8-10% annually," Putin said.

"Unfortunately, we still have no clear idea of what the optimal balance of energy resources will be," he said.

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