The Cabinet discussed the program of Russia's socio-economic development for the 2005-2008 period. It provided for three scenarios.
"We make the conclusion that even under the third, innovation, scenario, the growth rates [of the country's economy] fall about 15% short of the task set by the president," Mr. Gref said.
The minister explained that the analysis of the economic growth potential and the ministries' proposals for developing various sectors of the economy, primarily the processing sector, showed that even the implementation of the whole set of planned measures would fail to ensure annual economic growth of 7.3 to 9%.
Meanwhile, Mikhail Fradkov, Russia's prime minister, said as follows Wednesday: "We must get oriented towards the GDP doubling and conduct work on a wide range of issues at both macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. I think we must try and do this in time making use of all management bodies. We must step up our work in order to implement the tasks of boosting economic growth."
