“It’s a provocative question, but I will answer it. My answer is this: of course, the situation is complicated, and we have all heard the official position of the government. The word “stagnation” has been used for the first time. The planned GDP growth for this year is 1.5 percent. Unfortunately, the latest figures suggest that even that picture may seem optimistic. Those aren’t happy figures, far from so – 1.5 percent, if my memory doesn’t fail me, is the lowest level since 1999, - Mr Chubais started off by saying. – “Many people are probably jumping to conclusions that things are hopeless, crumbling, catastrophic, and so on. No, they are not - they are neither hopeless, nor crumbling, nor catastrophic.”
In this respect, Mr Chubais explained that Russia has tools to handle the situation. He mentioned a macro-economy built by Aleksey Kudrin in which the debt-to-GDP ratio is such that the President of the United Sates, the Prime Minister of Japan, the Prime Minister of Italy, the President of France and a dozen more world leaders “can only dream about.”
“The ten percent debt-to-GDP ratio – it’s one of the best indicators in the world. Add to that the falling inflation, the Central Bank’s foreign currency reserves of $500 billion, and so on. We have a colossal reserve cushion that has been built over the past 10-15 years. Those are important things that should be taken into account to avoid emotional assessments,” – Mr Chubais explained.
“Speaking about our affairs, here are some figures – I will say few words but just give you figures showing what happens to the nanoindustry if it’s applied to concrete branches. Look, light-emitting-diode equipment – the annual growth rate is 18 percent, composite materials – 20-25 percent, pharmaceutics – 18%. Look, renewable energy which has been at a zero level: the May government resolution envisages the creation of 1,500 megawatt for solar and 3,500 megawatt for wind-generated energy; 5,000 megawatt is a giant figure. The demand is worth tens of billions of dollars – from the zero level we will leap over to tens of billions of dollars within four to five years - by 2020. And the way it has all been planned aims at creating not just solar or wind-based power generation, but also machine-building to produce solar and wind power generating equipment. So, in four to five years, the country will have four new economic branches each of them growing,” – Mr Chubais said.