The Minister of Economic Development: Russian investment opportunities are very much underestimated

Photo: Vesti

Andrey Belousov pointed it out on the Vedomosti conference on the 4^th December.

“Russia is one of the few countries with fast growing markets” – said the minister. He also reminded, that the country has a huge volume of internal savings, which reach 30% of GDP. But only 20% of GDP are spent on the investments.

According to the Minister, this imbalance can be explained by the limitations of investment climate. As a result, on the world investment market Russia has only 3% share. In 2011 the FDI amount was $53 bln, which is more than twice less than that of China.

Mr. Belousov explains these moderate figures by the poor performance in such spheres as customs regulation, regulation in construction, and getting electricity. However, he insisted, that Russia performs much better on some other indicators. These are registering a company, registering property, and tax paying.

The official draw his attention on the big gap between the Russian regions in terms of investment climate. For example, in Surgut city in will take 150 days to get the construction permission, while in Tyumen the same procedure takes 448 days, three times longer.

“Even in the frame of current regulatory framework, there are big reserves to improve the investment climate” – summed up the Minister. In order to do this, he proposed to cooperate with the business, and attract the experts, including the international ones.

Currently, Russia occupies the 120^th place out of 183 in the Doing Business ranking, prepared by the World Bank. Euromoney puts Russia on the 60^th position out of 186 in its Country Risk ranking.