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Foreign exchange control counter-productive in Russia — minister

The abandonment of the current course is a step the state will never make

MOSCOW, January 14. /TASS/. Any foreign exchange controls are counter-productive in Russia, Economic Development Minister Alexey Ulyukayev said on Wednesday.

“I believe this is absolutely counter-productive. We had a possibility to keep the foreign exchange control regime but we gave it up in 2006,” the minister told Rossiya-24 TV channel.

“I believe that [foreign exchange control] is a one-way road,” he said.

The attempts to restore this regime will not yield the desirable result. Besides, they will negatively affect investor sentiments, which would be inadmissible amid the current decline in investment activity,” Ulyukayev said.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that Russia will not return to the mobilization-type economy.

“Russia is not going to isolate itself from the world and change its course towards creating a mobilization-type economy,” the premier said at the Gaidar economic forum.

“We have covered a huge way from the post-Soviet half-destroyed economy to a large Western-type economy and it would be a tremendous mistake to return to the past again, although we are periodically urged for this, and give up the role of an active player in the global world,” the premier said.

The abandonment of the current course is a step the state will never make, the premier said.