Putin expects small, medium businesses to grow in Russia

VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME, Apr 12 (PRIME) – The Russian government should allocate more funds to support  some sectors of the economy and to de-bureaucratize it, while small and medium-sized businesses should grow, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday in a news conference.

“We understand that we need to earmark additional resources to support of the industries. We understand that the right decision in the current situation is to de-bureaucratize the economy and create conditions for growth of new productions based on the newly-created logistics chains. Here I count on the growth of small and medium businesses and on the initiative that comes from the ground,” he said.

The current key rate of het central bank complies with the existing macroeconomic factors, he said.

“We have problems, otherwise the central bank’s key rate would not have grown to 20%. As you know, the central bank decided to reduce that key rate, and it is good for the current macroeconomic indicators,” he said.

The blitzkrieg that the West was hoping to achieve by imposing sanctions on Russia has failed. The country’s economy and financial system are stable, and the trend for stability of macroeconomic indicators will become evident very soon, but there are obvious risks connected to the logistics and settlements, Putin said.

Everything in the world is connected by chains, and if the Western countries continue to try to worsen the situation for Russia, they will worsen the situation for themselves.

“A food price growth is already happening, it started even before these events, and the growth of prices for some types of fertilizers exceeds the pre-crisis level by three times and continues growing. This is connected to the mistakes of the Western countries made in the energy and gas sphere … Everything is connected by chains that are difficult to break today, but if our partners continue worsening the situation in the financial, insurance, transportation spheres and in the sphere of sea transport, the situation will get worse for them as well,” he said.

Higher fertilizer prices may lead to starvation of people in many regions of the world and new migrations. Common sense should prevail here, and the countries that impose sanctions on Russia should come to their senses and make balanced decisions, he said.

“Of course, we are interested in cooperation with the hi-tech economies, it is obvious and everyone understands everything here. But what is the problem? During this cooperation, we got hooked on technologies and hi-tech products of other countries and stopped developing our competences and engineering schools. And it turns out that steps outside the rules are possible in the global economy,” he said.

The story of the MC-21 aircraft is an example. As soon as Russia advanced with this hi-tech product, the West blocked supplies of composite materials without any reason only to slow down production of the aircraft so that it does not enter the market faster than a new Boeing, Putin said.

The sanctions create obstacles, but Russia will continue its development, because no one would be able to close the entire world, he said.

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