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Source: Reuters
President Dmitry Medvedev announced that Russia would build a
high-tech hub near Moscow to spur modernisation of the economy and
reduce its dependence on oil and gas.
The centre, designed to develop five priority sectors - energy, IT,
telecommunications, bio-medical and atomic technologies - will be
built near Skolkovo, a new private-sector business school in the
Moscow region.
"We will build it in a place where we already have the solid
groundwork for doing it quickly. Speed is of particular
importance," Medvedev said.
The project, first mentioned by officials last month, aims to give
state backing to major companies to help them develop selected
innovative products.
The most promising of these will then to taken to fruition in
the new "Silicon Valley".
Critics have already ridiculed Medvedev's attempts to establish a
"knowledge economy" in Russia, saying the country's rampant
corruption, poor living conditions and lack of legal guarantees
make it ill-suited to rivalling California's science and technology
centre.
"The real attraction of the Kremlin's Innovation City lies not in
what it will accomplish for innovation but in how it will line the
pockets of Russia's corrupt officials," opposition politician
Vladimir Ryzhkov wrote in a comment for The Moscow Times.
"The greedy bureaucrats are already salivating in anticipation of
the hundreds of construction permits that will be required to
develop a Silicon Valley from scratch."
Tens of thousands of scientists, engineers and intellectuals
abandoned Russia during the economic chaos of the 1990s and though
the pace of the brain drain has slowed, the country's research base
has been severely depleted.
Russia's economy contracted by 7.9% last year as the global
economic crisis destroyed demand for key exports such as oil, gas
and metals, ending a decade-long boom.
The depth of the recession, by far the worst to hit any major
emerging market, shocked the Russian elite and spurred calls for
the economy to lessen dependence on raw materials.
Medvedev has repeatedly urged economic diversification, predicting
that the world's biggest energy exporter will remain extremely
vulnerable unless it can kick its dependence on oil and gas
sales.
But his critics say the Kremlin's modernisation rhetoric needs to
be translated into action and be accompanied by measures to improve
the investment climate if diversification efforts are to have any
chance of success.
