Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged to ease the state's grip on business in the country and cut down on bureaucracy.
"State officials must realize that they cannot rule business. The economy must be self-regulated," Medvedev said in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper published on Monday.
"Many state officials, having the best of intentions, are used to practice manual management: they ask the Kremlin, the president, [Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin about practically every issue," he said. "But it is impossible to have it like this all the time. It destroys the functioning of the economic system."
The president insisted that breaking the old mentality and introducing "solid and flexible" legislation should be the first steps toward building a new administrative system in the country.
