Russia losing out from globalization of economy – Gref

(Interfax – January 17, 2013)

The Russian economy is losing out from the process of globalization, Sberbank (RTS: SBER) president German Gref believes.

“A question: are we gaining or losing on global markets? Answer: losing. We gained in all recent years only thanks to resource exports. On all other positions we are losing,” Gref said at the Gaidar Forum, commenting on Russia’s competitiveness on world markets.

“Our current competitiveness in the overwhelming majority of cases is of a national nature. If we don’t make it international, then unfortunately our future as an economic player on global markets will be very sad,” Gref said.

Citing critics of globalization, he said that the economically strongest countries have the competitive advantage in the context of globalization.

“In globalization, like in competition, the strongest wins. … One of the world’s key problems is the division of society, the division of populations into those who earn $1 a day and those who earn $10 million a day. Globalization facilitates this disparity and it facilitates the disparity between countries…Because the strong gain even more from globalization processes while the weak become even weaker and poorer,” Gref said.

He also criticized Russia’s willingness to play by new rules after joining the WTO. “We can imagine that we are sending our hockey team out without explaining the rules of the game of hockey to it. We say whoever gets the most pucks into the opponent’s net wins. What happens in this case? The first thing you want to do is hide this puck away and crawl to the opponent’s net in order to stick it in there. That’s what we’re now doing in the WTO,” Gref said.