On Friday, Standard & Poor's raised its outlook on sovereign credit rating of Russia from "negative" to "stable." The international rating agency believed that the influence of external risks on the Russian economy has slightly decreased, although it still has to adapt to a double external shock due to low oil prices and Western sanctions. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, inspired by S&P's forecast, said that it reflects objective process Russian economy's adaptation to changing external conditions, and now the Finance Ministry expects that Russia's rating will be raised to "investment."

Meanwhile, as deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia (2002-2003) Konstantin Korischenko believes, when the oil prices were high, Russia tried to improve the level of welfare and increase the share of public sector in the economy using the budget, and did it too quickly: "Now, in order to preserve the maintenance of social commitments, we must spend more and more budget on social programs. And where can we get money? Basically, we can do it only by using devaluation or by raising taxes, because we can't do it using the rate of economic growth."

According to the expert, right now Russia is trying to apply orthodox market economy methods - a strict budget, strict monetary policy. "But these methods should be applied to market players, to private companies, but we applied them to state-owned companies, which basically don't care about rates and budgets - they have a very different way of achieving their economic goals. Market management methods are applied to non-market economic structure, 70% of GDP of which is provided by the public sector. That is why such methods will have effect only on the background of large-scale privatization and increase of the number of market players."

Korischenko thinks that state sector of the economy deserves to exist and work, but only in limited spheres: "Everything else should work only based on market principles, principles of competition, which lead to the increase of efficiency. And the problems of efficiency and productivity are the most important today. So it is wrong to apply market methods to non-market players... By using gradual increase in oil prices, we will reach more or less balanced budget, at least in comprasion to the exchenge rate, prices, productivity. But we should not expect high growth rates in these conditions."