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Putin urges Russian govt to prepare new econ plan
MOSCOW, May 6 (Reuters) - Russia's President Vladimir Putin, who last month slammed his cabinet for having too little economic ambition, on Monday asked it to hurry to come up with a new medium-term plan, local news agencies reported.
"I am counting on at least a preliminary plan being made in the nearest future, especially as it should be thought of in the light of preparation for the 2003 budget," Itar-TASS quoted Putin as telling his cabinet.
Putin in April criticised his government's medium-term programme, which says Russia's economy should expand by 3.5-4.5 percent a year until 2005, for not being enough to close the yawing gap between Russia and developed states.
His economic aide, Andrei Illarionov, says Russia should have an eight percent annual economic growth to achieve that goal.
"We have been talking about the necessity of revising the main parameters of the country's economic development for the next four to five years," Putin told the cabinet, according to Itar-TASS. "A month has passed, but I have not seen any new figures."
All the major economic ministers and the prime minister were on holiday and absent from the meeting and Putin said he hoped that "those who are taking vacations today will tackle the problems we are having with new strength as soon as possible."
Russia has enjoyed two years of economic expansion, in part due to high world prices for commodity exports, particularly oil. The record gross domestic product growth was in 2000, when the economy expanded nine percent.
In 2001, growth slowed to five percent.
Analysts have likened Putin's requests for faster growth to Soviet-era wishful thinking and have said the economy could not expand by a bigger margin than three to four percent a year for several years given the scale of restructuring it is undergoing.
Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref has said that any attempts to speed up growth could lead to a crisis.
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