 Konstantin Y. Smolentsev Dear Vladislav! I work a lot with venture investors: European and North American, especially Canadian funds. How do you see formation of a competitive investment appeal of Russia? Or without it as part of a project, even led by a person with "great managerial experience, a good reputation in business circles, and credibility in the government" can solve such an ambitious task of the state as the IFC, which in the words of our President, "besides, can become a center for financial innovation»? Simply put, what spheres we can and should be more competitive in the world financial market? And how can it be achieved realistically? Vladislav Inozemtsev In terms of innovations we cannot be appealing today on any ground. Our innovative work is extremely fragmented. I know a lot of people who over the past years have been creatively and selflessly involved in developing innovations. Russia has a lot of original technologies. The problem is that they are very difficult to commercialize and almost impossible to implement, because the volume of existing monopolies, on one side, and the volume within the private sector – from the other, – is devastating. Most processes are tied not only to the technological element, but also an element of interest of managers, suppliers, contractors, workers and consumers. The scale of corruption here is comparable to the scale of corruption in state government. Maybe even more. As an innovative economy, we can not be of interest to the West in the next 10-15 years. Of course, you can create some pockets of innovation, but it's not economics. Investment appeal of «Skolkovo», even if it is big, is not Russia's investment appeal. And if we want to have serious competitive advantages, then it can be only one thing – diversification of resources on the local market. We have to, finally, admit that our attempts to level prices with the world and achieve energy efficiency did not give any results. Today our energy efficiency is higher than in late Soviet by 12-13%, although in Poland, for example, more than twice as much. Even with higher prices on our oil, gas and electricity on the local market we will not see serious market mechanism of energy saving. I think it would be more correct to go the other way. I do not know how this can be done technically – though mass devaluation, a sharp change in tariff policy or government subsidies, but it is necessary to make resources on the domestic market very cheap. It is necessary because then Western investors can come to us, having here cheap resources like in China and other countries to manufacture the final product. http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1407997 Konstantin Y. Smolentsev
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