Medvedev’s “desperate call for action”
Published: 10 September, 2009, 17:50
Edited: 12 September, 2009, 23:00
TAGS: Manufacturing, Oil, Medvedev, Russia, Interview, Politics, Economy, Gas
“We have no time at all left to modernize the economy, to invest heavily in high-tech and to move slowly from our dependence on oil and gas,” Viktor Linnik of the Slovo newspaper commented on Medvedev’s appeal.
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19 comments
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Medvedev speaks some true words, but under the present regime they are likely to remain only words, nothing more.
Yes no doubt we need act fast; as they say, if you don't have time to get it right, you sure as hell don't have time to get it wrong first. So where to begin, what needs to be done. Well we better enable business, at all levels, the big enterprises are inreasingly being well caterd for, I am not saying it's perfect, but the traffic light is more on yellow than red. But any analyisis of modern states shows you need the other part of the portfolio, the SMEs. To get these going means supporting the marketing with root and branch analysis of industries, and supporting the Angel and Mezzanine funding that is required to get things of the ground. Now there is one huge showstopper to all that, and that's our big old problem of corruption. This is the thing that needs eradicatiing fast, because if I pour more water into a leaking system, then amazingly the water goes, and I still have a leaky system. So lets get the business side in place, and this needs governement help as a fast initiator, in parallel with our private investments, but let's really go after the corruption in a heavy handed way, the time for talking is well over, we need action now. There will be mistakes, because we have to act so quickly, but it in this case the benefit does outweigh the costs. When the soviet union broke up, Russia lost lots to external initiated corruption, we don't want to loose everything to it.
I think that this is a grave problem that Russia faces,sure corruption is rife but maybe what really needs to be done is to involve the entire country in this effort.Government should circumvent the existing government structures and appoint new people to every town and city across Russia.These appointments should have it,as their primary function, to ascertain who and what enterprises ,no matter how big or small,can do with help via government loans and support to modernize their business efforts.People in Russia obviously need help to enable them to realize how they can compete better producing goods locally as apposed to importing them from other countries.Companies also need to get government subsidies or tax breaks to galvanize them to buy locally manufactured goods.Once this trend is established then maybe things will get moving.Government also needs to start publicity programs that appeal to Russians to root out corruption,report it ,all this hand in hand with "let each of you do what you can do your country sees you as a true patriot".Once people have a new vision to cling to and aspire to,then the noble Russian character will rise up throw of alcoholism and make Russia strong again a decisive force, economically and politically,as is its rightful place!