The Russian finance minister on Wednesday floated a new approach to catching up with the West in technology, a problem that has bedeviled the economy here for decades in spite of the country’s rich tradition in science.
The initiative, described by Aleksei L. Kudrin, the finance minister, at an economic forum, is the latest in a long line of policies trying to free Russia from the boom-and-bust cycles of commodity prices by making better use of the talents of its citizens.
The government will order ministries and state companies to use more of their procurement budgets to buy products that qualify as “innovative” and that are made in Russia.
State procurement orders total about $133 billion, he said, and 15 percent now go to Russian technology companies.
Government orders will “support everybody who wants to work in this sphere, everybody who wants to work for the future,” Mr. Kudrin said.
Translating Russia’s bounty of scientific talent into popular, or even functional, products is a problem that has vexed the country since Soviet times. In a recent survey by Thomson Reuters, Russia lagged far behind China, Brazil and India in registered patents, even though the country’s officials project a self-image of scientific accomplishment. It is now recognized as an acute economic vulnerability because about 80 percent of exports are natural resources like oil and metals, making Russia susceptible to their price swings.
President Dmitri A. Medvedev has made innovation a focus of his tenure, though with few results so far. One government effort is a fund for nanotechnology, Rosnano, which is trying to leapfrog the West’s lead in semiconductors with a next generation of technology products.
From:www.nytimes.com
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