The economy with substantial state interest will not be able to achieve a fast rate of growth, Igor Artemiev, head of the Federal Anti-Trust Service of Russia, said in an interview to TV channel Rossiya 24. In his opinion, one of the ways to stimulate growth and competition in the economy could be large-scale privatization, and also, maybe, partial liquidation of major state-run corporations.
"If we want to see a Russian production miracle, we need to move toward privatization and, overall, the winding-up of major state-run corporations. They should leave space for a number of innovative advanced mid-sized and small or even big companies," he said.
Artemiev noted that "Japan's economic miracle" became a reality just after the liquidation of state monopolies. Meanwhile, the anti-trust authority's chief executive emphasized that not all sectors should lose state control. "There are sectors, including monopolistic, in which the state should always have a presence, namely public infrastructure, where not a single company should encounter discrimination, all companies should have equal access, for instance, to the railway network and power grids," he noted.
At the same time, considerable state presence in other sectors of the economy is a major drag on competition, Artemiev said confidently. "This dampens the pace of economic growth and, what's more importantly, makes fairly unpromising our further economic development, we lose hope for faster growth because fast economic growth is typically not possible in state-controlled economies," the FAS chief stressed.
He pointed out that for this reason there is an objective to hold a large-scale privatization campaign "especially in the monopolistic sectors". "This is a health-improving mechanism that, by the way, does not require funds. Competition always leads to higher labor productivity, always creates innovations, provides people with new opportunities from the point of intellect, employment and development of human resources," Artemiev said.
