UPDATE: Putin: Sustainable growth is Russia’s economic target

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MOSCOW, Oct 18 (PRIME) -- The Russian government has stabilized the economy but the goal of the current economic policy is to ensure sustainable growth, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of union of non-resource sector entrepreneurs Business Russia on Tuesday.

“We have now managed to stabilize the economy but our goal is broader and larger, to attain sustainable growth. In order to do this, we must find new instruments and raise the effectiveness of support measures we have launched,” Putin said.

“In this context, I suggest discussing in detail how to ensure the mechanisms of export support, to increase affordability of credit resources, to build relations between private businesses and state companies.”

Putin said that state companies will increase purchases from small and medium businesses to 15% from 10% in monetary terms.

The president separately said that he agrees with the business union that Russia must remove some “rudiments” of foreign currency control over enterprises. “I agree, some rudiments which we have today obviously contradict the current practices and life, it is changing fast. Furthermore, we did not launch our high-tech products on markets before, save for the defense sector products, while now our IT-technologies are developing and much more, this alone can be a reason to be proud.”

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