Viktor Vekselberg, President of the Skolkovo Foundation and Chairman of the Renova Group Board of Directors, gave a press conference on the closing day of the G20 summit.
Viktor Vekselberg noted that thanks to the wide range of experts representing a stark variety of companies and global industries that are part of it, the Renova group had been able to convey its vision of the priorities in the field of innovations and development to the summit participants. He further elaborated on the four specific priorities.
The first is the issue of energy efficiency relating the fact that the misbalance in the global power economy trends and the disproportionate access to energy resources currently generate a high demand for innovations and modern technologies to make their way into this industry. It is also the issue of current trends and tendencies observed in the oil industry, alternative energy forms, as well as security issues for the nuclear sector.
IT quite predictably became the second priority. Mr. Vekselberg pointed out that the world keeps changing, and now we have entered the age of global computerisation, with the entire system of access to information becoming a determining criterion in national policies.
The availability of information will, to a significant extent, depend on the global ability to synchronise and manage the entire sector of operations related to free access to information.
The third priority is health care. Mr. Vekselberg pointed out that the humanity today is verging towards discovering breakthrough methods of controlling diseases that had been plaguing the humankind for decades or even centuries. He voiced his hope that the nearest future will see the solution to fighting cancer, AIDS and many other widespread diseases.
«We are going to achieve growth in life expectancy during our own lifetime».
He also reminded that whereas health care issues were formerly viewed as a kind of social obligation and were invariably referred to the category of cash-consuming expenses, today the situation is quite different.
Health care has transformed into a sector worthy of being referred to the economic category, with health care spending becoming an investment.
Viktor Vekselberg stressed that expert estimates confirm: extending life expectancy by one year only will already result in significant GDP growth. That is why he believes that the struggle to stretch life expectancy and improve the quality of life is essentially the struggle to achieve economic growth and development.
The fourth priority evolves around intellectual property.
«The fundamental importance of these issues lies in their role of a general indicator of economic development», believes Mr. Vekselberg.
He went on to emphasise that the most developed countries dominate the knowledge market, which fact puts free access for the developing economies and the underdeveloped countries to the global treasury of human knowledge resources among the foreground objectives.
He also accorded special attention to the fact that the scope of innovations includes issues related to intellectual property protection and safeguarding the rights of developers. Therefore, finding optimal ways of tackling these aspects becomes an essential factor which serves to stimulate the development of innovative approaches in all types of economic activities exercised by the humanity.
Mr. Vekselberg also voiced his desire to see certain continuity in G20’s work, which means that these items should continue to feature on the agenda. It was noted, that the issues in question are by no means of momentary nature and that finding a solution to such long-term issues is critical for succeeding in struggling with crises, recession and other challenges.
Mr. Vekselberg highlighted the fact that when speaking about problems of employment, or unemployment for that matter, all participants in this summit, stressed that the question is not as simple as just how can new jobs to be created, but rather how can fundamentally new jobs appear.
«Russia is being very consistent on this matter; our President has announced the creation of 25 million new modern jobs in one of his addresses. And this is an objective to be achieved using fundamentally new approaches», concluded Mr. Vekselberg.