Russia’s rosy future as depicted in Prime Minister Putin’s State Duma report
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, presenting the constitutionally mandatory Cabinet annual report on the government’s activities and performances in 2010 in the State Duma at the end of April, clearly depicted the type of future he sees for Russia and its citizens between now and 2020.
Specifically, he noted that his Cabinet, with the help of leading experts on the land, is currently putting the finishing touches to the ‘Strategy-2020,’ which is directed, first of all, on the searches for, amongst others, the new reserves for economic growth and correct alignment of the government’s top priorities within the frameworks of the state policy on Russia’s modernization.
The results expected from the realization of the ‘Strategy-2020’ programs, according to the prime minister, are expected to leapfrog Russia in terms of the volume of GDP into top five leading global economies and increase its per capita GDP to over $35,000 per year by 2020. For comparison, the projected parameters of improvement in Russians’ living standards incorporated in the ‘Strategy-2020’ programs are much higher than today's parameters of economic prosperity in such G8 states as France and Italy. “However, to achieve these objectives, Russia needs a decade of sustainable economic growth devoid of turbulences or rash experiments that sometimes border on unjustified liberalism or social demagogy.”
Russia and its pre-term exit from crisis
Speaking about the current crisis in the report, Putin outlined a number of key macroeconomic results testifying to a ‘preliminary victory’ over the financial meltdown and its negative consequences for the Russian economy. “Russia has been able to defeat the financial crisis on all fronts, a fact evident today in the economy, which is on the upspring and becoming more effective. All these are testimonies to viability of our economy and the overall good quality work done by the government,” he added. Indeed, thanks to the excellent job done by the Cabinet within the frameworks of the state’s antirecession programs, the final victory over the global crisis is now expected to arrive much sooner than previously expected, by early 2012, when the economy is projected to completely recover from all the negative consequences of the recession, and not 2013-14, as previously forecast.
One of the major indicators that today’s Russia is in an active phase of exit from the current financial quagmire and on the right trajectory of economic development is evident in the fact that the growth of GDP, restarted in July 2009, had grown to 4% by the end of 2010, one of the highest growth parameters, a trend that made Russia the best performing economy among the G8 nations in 2010. Besides, the expected growth of GDP in the current year, according to official forecasts, is expected at about 4.2%. According to Putin’s data, almost half of the GDP growth in 2010 was generated by goods processing industries and other sectors producing goods and services with high levels of added values, a positive trend that speaks about the gradual reduction of Russia’s perniciously dangerous one-sided dependence on its raw commodities sectors. “Each percentage point in the attained GDP growth did not come easily to the government, but was achieved via the persistent work of all the Cabinet members throughout last year.”
“Successful realization of ‘Strategy-2020’ programs is expected to leapfrog Russia in terms of GDP into top five leading global economies by 2020.”
One more evidence about the ongoing improvement in the Russian economy is the sharp increase in activities on of its stocks market, which generally precisely reflects the prevailing trends and states of affairs in the economy. Thus, the Russian stock exchange market capitalization as in April 2011, according to Putin, totaled $1.1trln, making it one of the global leaders in terms of growth of indices of stock markets’ activities and the volumes of transactions. “Today our stock exchange market performances are the best among the BRICS countries, an achievement that highlights the ongoing gradual positive change of the general structure of the Russian economy and improvement in its overall efficiency.”
Key crisis lessons for Russia and its economic future
Speaking about the importance of the lessons gained from the crisis for the future of Russia and its economy, Putin called his main lesson from the recession the full comprehension of the fact that the government’s economic and political infirmity in critical situations in today's world can become real threats to the sovereignty of any country, “because there will always be people or nations wishing to come or even fly over long distances to give advice on what to do in such circumstances.”
All this was clearly illustrated by the current global crisis, which generated unprecedented critical problems that led to a serious structural breakdown in the global economy, collapse in national banking systems and near fatal disequilibrium in both government and corporate finances in some countries, thus putting them under a real threat of sovereign financial and economic bankruptcies.
Such negative fallouts from the crisis, in their turn, became palpable threats to the political independence of the worst hard-hit countries, and thus their continuing existence as independent nations. Examples of the latter include a group of Eurozone countries, notably, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, as well as Iceland, where the scales and rates of crisis-related destabilization of their societies and national economies 
reached such a catastrophic level that their leaders were finally compelled to go to Brussels, IMF and other organizations with caps in hands for emergency financial aid urgently needed to curtail the near fatal negative consequences of the financial meltdown on their national economies.
Putin also noted today's crisis-related sharp limitations to the previously easy sources of generating additional financial resources, notably, boosting export of raw material commodities and attraction of affordable foreign loans from global capital markets, which have compelled his government to put more emphasis on the domestic market and dynamic development of non-raw material commodities industries, quality investments and boosting the activities of local businesses as the new sources of economic growth drivers in the post-crisis era.
All these new tendencies underscore the need to see the current ‘oil boom’ as the last wake-up call to fully embrace the acute necessity for modernization of Russia and adoption of new wave of modern industrialization polices, the head of Russian government added. “This is why today's oil boom should not dampen our objectives, but quite the contrary, should push us toward a prompt transition to a new model of economic development,” he added. “This means that the main accent of the modernization policy, without which any further economic development of our country is clearly impossible today, should be focused, first of all, on investment in citizens, their capabilities and talents,” he added. “In the same way, similar efforts should also be directed at the creation of all the normal conditions that are necessary for self-realization of our citizens, realization of their constructive initiatives and improvement of their general life quality, living standards and the overall level of wellbeing and prosperity.”
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