MOSCOW, December 29 (RIA Novosti) - The minister of economic development and trade said Thursday that Russia's GDP would not be doubled by 2010, but promised faster economic growth.
"The GDP will not be doubled by 2010, but we will be able to achieve fairly high economic growth using additional mechanisms in the medium term to ensure that GDP will be doubled in the longer term," German Gref said at a government session.
According to Gref, an analysis of the most competitive economic sectors will be completed in the first half of 2006 and will underlie efforts to accelerate economic growth.
In his state-of-the-nation address to parliament in 2003, President Vladimir Putin set for the government an ambitious goal to double the nation's GDP in 10 years, then fixed the deadline for 2010, but these plans have since been repeatedly revised.
However, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov cited the president as saying that the doubling of the GDP had not been deleted from the agenda. He urged the government to adopt a proactive economic and industrial policy to step up the application of the mechanisms in the medium term that Gref had mentioned.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the government administration was the key factor that influenced the rates of the country's economic growth and called on the ministers to improve the quality of their work.
He said Russia would enjoy record high GDP growth in 2008, but did not specify a figure.
