The difficult economic situation in Russia will last approximately until mid-2025. To deal with this, the country must enter the markets of “friendly countries”, abandon state capitalism and “Stone Age” practices of entrepreneurs, and also drastically reduce the number of civil servants and of security officers. About it, on March 2, declared the founder of UC businessman Rusal Oleg Deripaska at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum. RTVI collected his statements.
“GosGazMyas is a road to nowhere”
Deripaska described the economic situation in Russia as difficult and unpredictable. According to the businessman, he will remain so until mid-2025. Therefore, Russia needs to enter the markets of “friendly countries”, but it will not be easy, the businessman warned.
“Other rules of the game. If WTO rules do not apply to Russian entrepreneurs, then it is necessary to move to bilateral agreements. There will be problems with the calculations, the sanction pressure will be serious,” Deripaska said.
The businessman stressed the need for a market economy and a competitive environment.
“State capitalism, or as it is sometimes called, GosGazMyas, is, of course, a road to nowhere. I am horrified to see the resources that have been spent over the past year, obviously, in vain. I used to think it was billions, but now I see the bill is already in the trillions,” Deripaska said.
“Only an entrepreneur will lead our country like Moses”
The businessman urged creating attractive and understandable terms for entrepreneurs, to end ‘bondage, since the Stone Age, to articles and the practice of planting everyone in a row for no reason’ .
According to Deripaska, the man who committed economic mischief and atoned for it should be allowed to continue working as entrepreneurs create new jobs.
According to Deripaska, many projects and companies collapse, not even because of “custom cases”, but because “the machine works, it lined up and went like a skating rink”. This practice should stop, believes the businessman.
“The entrepreneur is the only entity that will lead our country during these 25 years, just like Moïse did in his time,” Deripaska said.
“There will be no money next year”
Deripaska called for “rule of law and predictability” in the market because Russia needs foreign investors.
“You don’t have to choose. There will be no money next year. We will need foreign investors. A foreign investor will look at how a Russian investor earns, what conditions he has,” the businessman explained.
If the attractiveness of the Russian market is not assured, “we will continue to dream and say the same words in 1933”, believes Deripaska. According to him, the constant changes in the rules will alienate foreign and Russian entrepreneurs.
“Officers and security forces are a heavy burden on the economy”
The number of civil servants in Russia should be reduced “two or three times”, the number of law enforcement officers – “a few times”, Deripaska said.
“It’s a heavy burden for the economy, and even more so for the economy, which is being weighed down by the sanctions and all the other problems. You have to somehow wake up and win, and run forward. There are too many state apparatuses and state capitalism, we need more freedom, really more freedom and competition,” the businessman said.
Krasnoyarsk Territory Governor Alexander Uss, who sat next to Deripaska during his speech, reacted to this with the phrase: “Ready to shrink.”
This is not the first time that Oleg Deripaska has proposed cutting the state apparatus. In April 2022, he spoke to “reduce police forces and law enforcement by three to five times”, as well as the reduction of the official car fleet for civil servants.
