Russia's exit from the economic crisis will be slow and the world's biggest energy exporter will remain extremely vulnerable unless it can kick its dependence on oil and gas sales, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday. In an end-of-year television interview, Medvedev said Russian gross domestic product was likely to have contracted by at least 8.7 percent this year, though he said economic growth could total 2.5 to 5.0 percent in 2010.
"The exit from the crisis will be fairly slow," Medvedev said during an interview with state television channels. "We still have an economic system which is based on the energy market," he said. "Without modernisation, our economy has no future even though it relies on huge natural riches." Medvedev has repeatedly called for reducing Russia's dependence on oil and gas exports since taking over as Kremlin chief in May 2008.
A decline in annual GDP of 8.7 percent would be Russia's worst economic result since 1994, when the economy, trapped in the chaos which followed the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, contracted by more than 10 percent. Medvedev's predecessor, former Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, presided over an economic boom fuelled by high prices for natural resources, soaring domestic demand and massive foreign borrowing by some of the country's richest businessmen.
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