Putin calls for leap forward for business

Russia must make a gigantic leap forward and become one of the 20 economies with the most favorable investment climate, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. "We set forth the challenge of making the list of countries with the most attractive business climate in the next few years ... to make 100 steps forward and rise to the 20th place from 120th place in terms of business," Putin told the Russia Forum 2012. To reach that goal Russia must take measures including cutting the time to connect business to energy grids by three-quarters, a two-thirds cut in the time it takes to fill out tax records, and an 85 percent cut in the time taken for customs controls. Investors will receive building licenses in one-fifth of the current period and will fill in a third of the current amount of documents for them, he said. Other measure will provide rights for businessmen to file joint suits to protect their interests. Putin said Russia could soon be in the top-five list of world's largest economies. "Russia is in sixth place of world's largest economies and of course we have all prerequisites for entering the top-five soon," the prime minister said. Putin set out two scenarios for the Russian and world economies' further development. "A negative scenario stipulates further worsening of current problems amid an inability to make drastic decisions at national and international levels. Such a scenario is fraught with further waste of the future, higher debt, protectionism growth, trade wars, political instability and a washing-out of the middle class in many developed states," he said. A positive scenario could see a return to an economy of real means and assets, from the current economy of "soap bubbles." "(It should be a return to) an economy with human face, to an economy which creates jobs but not derivatives," Putin told the forum, adding the instability of world economy had become a long-term issue and there were still risks of new global recession.