Russian First Deputy Minister of Economic Development Alexei Likhachev declared that the modern economic conditions are favorable for exports. Taking into account the devaluation of the ruble, the competitiveness of Russian products on foreign markets has increased. This was reflected in the volume of exported products. "Despite the overall decline in foreign trade, the export of non-primary goods has risen,’’ Likhachev said. Non-commodity exports amounted to 187.2 billion dollars in 2015, a decline of 26.9%, while in physical expression non-oil exports increased by 4.9%. Exports of industrial products with a high degree of processing also rose more than to 7% in physical terms by 33.4%, innovation products grew by 11.7%.
Meanwhile, as suggested by a member of the Federation Council's Budget and Financial Markets Committee Rostislav Goldstein, "today it is necessary to pump liquidity into banks, to saturate the economy with money. Money is the circulatory system of the economy. No money means no economy. The economy cannot be persuaded with words. It is possible to read mantras, it is possible to pray, but if you have not laid the foundation, it will not change anything."
Goldstein is convinced that the worst thing for the Russian economy would be a rise in oil prices to 100 dollars, and the lifting of sanctions. The senator explained his point of view: ‘Every time you can buy something, why build? We have a rich country. Russia has got a huge and good dowry from our ancestors in the form of areas of arable land, a vast resource of raw materials. But if we start to build machines with numerical control, we would not catch up with the Germans quickly — they do it better."
Goldstein encourages to use the advantages that Russia was given by nature itself: "These are raw materials, there is at least primary production and then the issues of food, clean food free of GMOs, from chemicals of all kinds. And we сan feed the whole world, earn very good money, because there is nothing more profitable than farming."
