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WORLD BANK TO STUDY RUSSIAN COMPANIES' COMPETITIVENESS

MOSCOW, November 2 (RIA Novosti) - From 2005, the World Bank intends to start studying the competitiveness of Russian companies, head of the World Bank's Moscow office Crystalline Georgiyeva told a seminar, "Competitiveness in Industry," held at the Higher School of Economics.

She noted that in the past five years Russia's economic growth had been prompted by several factors, the most important of which were structural reforms, high world energy prices, a cheaper ruble and some other factors. Today the potential of all these factors has been actually used up, the head of the World Bank's Moscow office said.

"We need to understand how Russian companies are ready to perceive the current situation and their chances to operate in the unfolding new conditions," Crystalline Georgiyeva said. She specified that it could take a year to carry out a survey of Russian companies.

The World Bank explained that until the end of this year the World Bank would completely formulate a concept of its project for a survey of Russian companies and conclude an agreement with contractors in Russia. "The Wold Bank expects to carry out a survey of 700-1,000 companies selected at random in the winter of 2005 and obtain the results somewhere in June 2005.

"The project, which we are planning to carry out in Russia, is expensive enough. If we realize that our effort is too expensive, the number of companies may be reduced and we shall confine our efforts to individual industrial sectors and individual regions," RIA Novosti's interlocutor said. He added that the World Bank had carried out similar surveys in many countries, for example, in Malaysia, China and Brazil.

"Our research carried out in those countries revealed that companies needed quite different transformations than that, the governments prepared for them."