The Gaidar Forum is an Excellent Site for Debates of the Expert Community and the Government

The main agenda of the Gaidar Forum - 2014 was dedicated to a search for a new model of economic growth in Russia. That was justified by the fact that from the mid-2012 the economic growth rates kept going down while the rest of the world was recovering from the crisis, that is, Russia entered the opposite phase. It became clear that the former model of economic growth operated only up to the level of the Russian economy of the end of 2008; having achieved that level in 2012 Russia's economic growth rates started to decline slowly.

It is important and the Gaidar Forum - 2014 demonstrated it that the political leadership of the country recognized now that the problem of slowdown of economic growth rates was of an internal nature. So, the present Forum was perceived as a "brain storm" in discussion of the model of economic growth at least in the mid-term prospect.

Also, it is worth mentioning that the government and the expert community have reached a consensus both on the issue of improvement of the business climate in Russia and the fact that the small and mid-sized business should become drivers of economic recovery. By the way, the small and mid-sized business accounts for 55%-75% of GDP of developed countries, while in Russia, for the mere 15%–20%. At present, it is important to decide which conditions are to be created for the small and mid-sized business so that it could become the driver of economic growth.

Also, there is a relative consent between experts and representatives of the government that it is important to deal with the issues of the economy of supply, rather than the ones of the economy of demand as it was done in the past 15 years. It means that Russia has to learn to live within means, motivate labor efficiency and not to hope for growth in demand on account of petrodollars.

А.L. Vedev, Director of the Structural Research Center