Russian government to pump capital into innovation-oriented economy

The Russian government has decided to allocate 90 billion rubles (about 3 billion U.S. dollars) to college researchers and a series of reforms from 2010 to 2012 to boost the country's innovation-oriented economy, a senior official said Wednesday.

The government planned to establish a market for intellectual property rights and knowledge economy and combine the technical budget system with higher education institutions to form the country's innovation-oriented economy, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

In the next three years, the government also plans to invest 8 billion rubles (270.3 million dollars) to set up industrial incubators and technical centers at higher education institutions, he said.

The innovation-oriented economy needs a solid base of massive national purchases amounting to 4,000 billion rubles (135.2 billion dollars), Ivanov said.

The Russian economy, heavily dependent on oil and natural gas exports, was hit hard by the international financial crisis. President Dmitry Medvedev established a presidential commission on economic modernization and technological development in May 2009, aiming to help the commodity-driven economy evolve into an innovation-oriented one.

Also Wednesday the government announced that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has taken charge of a commission designed to boost the country's modernization.

Source: Xinhua