Minister Klebanov: State to ensure efficient cooperation of science, business and authorities

"The state should take the responsibility and ensure efficient cooperation of science, business and authorities to transfer Russia to an innovative track of development," announced Russian Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Ilya Klebanov at the Russian-US business forum in Moscow on Wednesday.

The Russian leadership has set a task of diversifying the economy and developing it in an innovative way, he emphasized.

The state has undertaken the responsibility to analyze the country's resources and markets and defined the priorities in developing science and technologies. The governmental program "The basics of the policy of the Russian Federation in science and technology until 2015" contains nine fundamental directions and about 50 crucial technologies.

The state should create and maintain the intellectual environment, preserving the basic institutions to develop science and technologies and creating a new innovative infrastructure, Klebanov believes.

The country has already received technology-implementing zones and technology-translating centers, even in the regions, the minister said. An inter-departmental economic council has been set up. Three fourths of its members are representatives of business and science and only one fourth are state officials.

For three successive years Russia has held Venture Fairs, Klebanov recalled. The fourth one will be held on October 16-17 in Perm, the Volga federal district. In future such fairs are to be organized twice a year.

The state's most important task at the present stage is "to create conditions for business development and lowering barriers for entering the market," the minister emphasized.