Published: November 15th, 2016

- Today the Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev has been detained. Will it lead to changes in the economic policy of the Russian Federation?

- It is good, that Gaidarians ceased to be untouchable and lost, to some extent, the boundless confidence of the President. It is good that even the Minister is not untouchable on this issue. The big question is, does this mean the detention of a turn in the economic policy. The answer to this question, we get when we learn about the new appointment. Who will take the place of corruptioner: will be a person from the same Gaidar's team - which means that the stagnation will last for another twenty or so years, or a man of understanding will come from the real sector, and then we can hope for the country to get out of the crisis.

- In your LiveJournal You wrote that for many years the Liberals have promoted the idea that we need to listen to the Americans. As it is known, Trump, who came in power, has a negative attitude towards the WTO. Is there a possibility that the Russian government would reconsider its views on this organization?

- The authority of the WTO has decreased not only in America but around the world, and will decline further after coming to power of Trump. WTO already largely exists only in the minds of the representatives of our government. What this fantasy will live on in our offices - hard to say, but I hope that over time will come to naught.

- The protection of national manufacturers many equated to the Iron Curtain, to try to build a closed state as the Soviet Union or the Republic of Korea. Why do experts see only the extremes - fully open or fully closed market and what do you propose?

- Even in the Soviet Union there was no Iron Curtain in the field of economic policy. We provide not to build an impervious fence, but only to care about equal conditions of competition. We somehow always has two extremes: either cover the whole country and lower the iron curtain, or say that we have nothing to defend, we do not produce, so the protection is not needed. The truth is in the middle. We need a level playing field, not everywhere, but only in those areas that we plan to develop in Russia. With the improvement of the Central Bank policy, improvement of tax policy, reduction of the cost of raw materials in the domestic market, the height of our "fence" will be reduced, because it is profitable to invest in the production, respectively, the differential in terms of competition between Russia and other countries will not be so noticeable .

- Money issue -This is a matter of the greatest number of disputes. Everyone is afraid that if the market will be a lot of cheap money, they simply leave the market of currency speculation. How to avoid it?

- Everything must be done to make it profitable to invest in the development of production in Russia - it is reasonable protectionism, cheap resources, stimulating production and investment in the development, the tax system. Then it will be more profitable to invest in production, rather than in currency manipulation.