MOSCOW -- I recently attended a conference in Moscow aimed at attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to Russia. It was a high-level conference, organized by Interfax and Chatham House and attended by ministers, senior bureaucrats and leading businessmen, both Russian and foreign.
For a conference designed to attract FDI -- and there were many businessmen from West Europe and North America in the room -- it was a strange event. Usually at such conferences, the locals try to oversell their country, but in this case Russian ministers, officials and businessmen competed with each other to give the strongest reasons for not investing in Russia.
The minister for economic development and trade, German Gref, and natural resources minister Yuri Trutnev complained about the government for delaying, even reversing, economic reforms and about the bureaucracy for delaying and distorting the implementation of reforms that have been introduced. It was mind-boggling, yet understandable.