Today, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev presented his report on the work of the government over the past year in the State Duma.
Prime Minister noted that during this period, the country's economy faced many unfavorable conditions that hidered its development. "It is primarily low prices for oil and other commodities. It is not only about how low the their drop is, but also about its speed - in 2015, the oil prices dropped twofold in six months. No economy can adapt to such rapid decrease in the value of exports quickly," RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.
Prime Minister admitted that "it was a great shock" for the Russian economy.
"Another problem is, of course, the external pressure of sanctions. Russia is still cut off from most of the international credit resources and the modern technologies markets. The third problem is instability and poor predictability of the global markets, which are influenced by political laws right now, rather than economic laws, I think you feel it too," Medvedev noted.
At the same time, the structural problems of our own economy, which worsened in the crisis situation, turned out to be the biggest problem. "Such combination of factors would be fatal for us, for our country, if it took place in the 90s, for example. No one knows whether our country would be able to preserve the borders, in which we exist today," he said.
Despite all of this, the government managed to avoid the worst, and even better, it managed to achieve certain successes.
"We have identified five areas, without which a long-term development would be almost impossible. Those are the optimization of budgetary policy, the support of non-commodity exports and import substitution, the improvement of business environment, the improvement of quality of the state itself. And most importantly, the development of social sphere," Prime Minister stated.
"We will do everything possible for all social obligations to be fulfilled, including pensions. We must do everything possible to return to a normal level of indexation. We will strive to do so, and I hope that the economic conditions will be better by 2017," he assured.
"We will try to do everything possible, so that social support would be more equitable, more targeted, so that those who really need it would receive it," he added.
