Dvorkovich Says Crisis Measures to Continue

President Dmitry Medvedev’s top economic aide put himself at loggerheads with the Central Bank chief Thursday, warning that the government could not yet afford to rescind any anti-crisis measures.
“Uncertainty and risks remain very high — this year as well as next year, therefore there is no basis for saying that we have taken off to stable growth,” Arkady Dvorkovich told reporters at a briefing ahead of Medvedev’s visit to the G20 summit in Pittsburgh next week.
Dvorkovich, who is the Kremlin’s point man for the summit, said the economic stability reached so far was purely based on the government’s stimulus measures and there was no reason to discontinue the measures.
“We must prolong those measures — full steam ahead,” he said, adding that this held true for all countries, including Russia.
Dvorkovich’s comments came a day after a report by Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatyev said financial markets have recovered sufficiently to withdraw some support measures. Ignatyev said the Central Bank would gradually withdraw collateral-free loan auctions.
Coordinating the withdrawal of economic stimulus packages will be a key topic at the summit, along with bank regulation, climate change and trade, and Dvorkovich said he expected that summit leaders would follow his advice to keep them in place. “I think the leaders will confirm, as did the finance ministers, that it is premature to drop these measures, but that it is necessary to think about formulating exit strategies,” he said.
Leading nations have poured trillions of dollars into their economies to avert a global economic meltdown. The first signs of recovery fueled debates about the right time to replace stimulus packages with normal market regulation.
Dvorkovich said efforts by governments represented in the G20 had been successful only in the narrow sense of coping with the crisis’ direct effects.
Medvedev will press summit participants for faster reforms of the international financial system because Moscow is unhappy with their speed so far, he said.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said it wants to see the introduction of unified global accounting and rating standards.
Dvorkovich also denied that the Russian delegation would focus on throwing guilt at the United States.
Asked whether Medvedev’s charge this week that the crisis was a result of “one country’s ill-conceived financial policies” would set the delegation’s theme for the Pittsburgh summit, Dvorkovich said Medvedev should not be cited out of context.
“He also said that the fact that the crisis is so deep was a result of structural failures in all economies, including Russia,” he said.
Dvorkovich, a 37-year old economist who holds a degree from Duke University, added that while opposed protectionist measures in principle, Russia should only slash some of its high tariffs if other economies did the same. “We are ready to reduce the level of protection for our domestic market, but only on the basis of reciprocity,” he said.