The World Economic Forum in Davos has become a wide platform to showcase achievements, develop long-term plans for the future, and express criticism in a professional manner.

This year, the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev presented at the forum a detailed report on the situation in the Russian economy and the social sphere. With all objectivity, the Prime Minister’s address was well-balanced in the sense that it contained information on both the positive side of the situation in the country and the problems that hinder progress.

Dmitry Medvedev placed the main emphasis in his speech in Davos on the constructive results of the previous year. “Against the backdrop of the macroeconomic situation, Russia is quite stable,” he said. “Economic growth last year was 3.5 percent, inflation was 6.6 percent. These are good figures.” However, these results are down from 2011, when the economic growth rate was at 4.3 percent, and inflation was at 6.0 percent.

The head of the Russian government also outlined the difficulties that hinder the economic recovery. These difficulties are exclusively of domestic nature. Among the problems are, above all, the needs to improve the competitiveness of Russian companies, to develop the infrastructure, and to strengthen the integration of global processes. “Our internal restraints now come to the forefront, and the main worry is that too little progress has taken place in addressing these challenges,” Medvedev stressed.

Is it possible to solve the problems that have accumulated in Russia in a short period of time? An answer to a question of this nature was supplied during the discussions in Davos. The Russian officials said that the country has “ambitious plans” to increase investment from 20 to 25 percent of GDP and, more specifically, to target the investment increase at the transportation sector, the energy industry, and infrastructural development. The target that the government has set for itself is ambitious indeed: to achieve the growth of the Russian economy by five percent a year, investments should increase by 10 percent annually for the next several years. However, it is not clear where these investments will come from.

Prime Minister Medvedev touched on a sensitive issue in this context: petrodollars are certainly a source of investment, “but the Russian economy will not collapse without the abundance of petrodollars, and its dependence on commodity exports is exaggerated.” At the forum, the Prime Minister said that since Russia is potentially the biggest agricultural country in the world, in the future there could occur a significant expansion of food exports. “In general, in the future, the expansion of Russia’s food exports and intellectual services will be in demand across the world no less than oil and gas is today,” Prime Minister Medvedev emphasized.

The program announced in Davos yet seems to be more declarative than substantive. After all, today, food and agricultural products account for only about three percent (USD9 billion) in the total volume of Russian exports. Energy exports stand at 60 percent. At the same time, the share of food imports into Russia is 18 percent of total imports, or USD35 billion. Nothing will change in this situation in the absence of concrete measures.