YUKOS CEO: Brains to fuel economic progress

A country's essential resource in the information era is education, not raw materials, YUKOS CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky said today at the international education forum. Khodorkovsky was quoted as saying the US' raw materials production accounts for $1 trillion of the total output of $11 trillion. The YUKOS CEO pointed out the potential industrial output growth fuelled by tapping new deposits is currently nearly wiped out. Russia will have the opportunity in the near future to boost its output volume by another 30-50 percent of the GDP by tapping further deposits. With such economic policy, the average wage will be not higher than $150-200 a month.

Using human abilities should currently be attached primary importance. The solution of the problems of education in general is too broad an area that cannot be handled in a short time. According to Khodorkovsky, the Internet is a pivotal point of solving this problem. "We need to teach people not how to use the Internet, but how to establish a new and cheap communications system", he said.

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