Today the 7th Gaidar Forum opens in Moscow. It is a unique intellectual platform which unites theorists and politicians, representatives of top financial circles and the global business elite. Every year celebrities of the world economy, Nobel Prize winners, the best representatives of leading universities (Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and so on) and representatives of the Russian political establishment gather in Moscow at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation.
The forum welcomes everybody who determines the global world order by his or her advanced achievements in economics and influences the socio-economic development of regions and states.
Ahead of the forum’s opening, Vladimir Mau, Rector of RANEPA, spoke about issues which would be discussed at the Gaidar Forum: “The main subject of discussion will be the launch of a new model of economic growth in Russia. We dealt with all the challenges which the country’s economy faced last year better than we could have thought at the end of 2014.”
Vladimir Mau sets parallels with the Chinese economy, which is going through difficult times as well: “The structural path which is chosen by Russia is opposite to the Chinese one. If China counts on internal demand, the Russian model should be oriented towards global demand. Premier Dmitry Medvedev spoke about it earlier. When we speak about import substitution, it is equal to promotion of exports for us. Import substitution is an ability to create, produce a product which will be competitive in the country and abroad under the current currency configuration. That’s the only way when import substitution can be an effective economic policy.”
Mau thinks that the world is in an economic crisis: “After the 1930’s crisis the world saw a new global currency, the dollar replaced the pound. After the 1970’s crisis the world came out actually with two global currencies, the dollar and the euro (the German mark was transformed into the euro). What is the currency of this configuration after the global crisis? Is this the dollar, the euro and the yuan? This is partially dependent on the actions of the Chinese monetary authorities, when the yuan becomes a fully convertible currency. What will be the role of the regional reserve currencies? That is, whether the regional reserve currencies will play a greater role than they did in the previous 50 years. For us it is an interesting question of the role of the ruble, the prospects of the ruble as the regional reserve currency within the Eurasian Economic Space.”
According to the expert, with regard to Russia the main question is that of launching a new model of economic growth. “Everyone talks about a new model of economic growth. The economy was growing fairly rapidly until 2009, in 2009 it fell, in 2012 it recovered to the level of 2008, and then without sanctions, without any drop in the oil prices, it began to slow down quickly. It's just another confirmation that Russia’s inhibition is primarily of a structural nature, and the problems associated with the external shocks and sanctions have exacerbated the situation greatly. Therefore, the main issue of the economic debate of the Russian experts at the Forum, despite the importance of the discussions of the favorite topic of ' whether the economy has reached bottom or not’ and ‘what will be the price of oil’, the real question is the conditions of launching of the new growth mechanism,” Mau states.
