Russian PM calls for technological innovation, competitiveness

Russia needs to catch up with developed countries in terms of applied advanced technologies, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday.

At a meeting of the presidential council for economic modernization and innovations held in the Chuvash Republic along the Volga river, Medvedev admitted that the country falls behind the most technologically-advanced competitors in the global market.

In 2013, Russia ranked 7th in the total number of domestically patented inventions but only 25th in the number of internationally- recognized patents, Medvedev said.

Admitting that Russia uses much more foreign technologies than domestic patents, the prime minister said "import of the intellectual property exceeds export by eleven times."

"That characterizes our modest place in the world high-tech market, or a certain degree of technological backwardness, to be frank," an online government statement quoted Medvedev as saying.

The prime minister cited Russia's state-owned atomic energy corporation Rosatom and Skolkovo Innovation Center, Russia's Silicon Valley located in Moscow, as an exemplar of successful intellectual property projects.

To sharpen competitiveness of Russia's inventions abroad, Medvedev called for speeding up ratification of Russia's participation in the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs, a mechanism aimed at intellectual property protection.

He also called for removing bureaucratic and fiscal red tapes and restrictions in intellectual property.

Under external pressures and sanctions imposed by the West for its "involvement" in the Ukraine crisis, Russia has been steering its economy toward more self-independent and sustainable development patterns to get through the current crisis. Endite