"RUSSIA AND THE WORLD: VALUES AND VIRTUES" is the main theme of the IX Gaidar Forum, which started today, one of the most authoritative events for discussing political, economic and social issues at the international level. The meetings are held at the site of the Russian Academy of Science and Technology, a partner of the World Trade Center.

The forum traditionally brings together members of the federal government and leaders of the subjects of the Russian Federation, scientists, public figures, authoritative Russian and foreign experts, representatives of the media and large businesses. In 2018, the General Director of World Trade Center Moscow Vladimir Strashko takes part in the meeting.

The organizers of the event are traditionally the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Service under the President of the Russian Federation (RASHiGS) and the Institute of Economic Policy named after Yegor Gaidar.

Participants of the 9th Gaidar forum were greeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his address, he noted that "the decisive factor of leadership, competitiveness, and success of companies and states are knowledge and competence, the ability to generate and quickly master breakthrough technologies."

Next to the fields of the Forum started an open dialogue "The effectiveness of budget expenditures as a mirror of the efficiency of public administration", where key speakers were the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova and Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. Participants were challenged to identify the strategic vectors of growth of efficiency of the state management system, as well as make the necessary adjustments in the assessment of civil servants senior managers, in particular, to reduce the volume of violations and inefficient spending the use of public resources.

The central event of the first day of the Gaidar Forum was the planning meeting "Goals and values". The key participant of the meeting was traditionally made by the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. In his report, he dwelled on issues of digitalization, covering now all areas of human activity and is a source of further growth. The Chairman of the Government of Russia commented on the rapidly discussed issues related to the spread of crypto-currencies. In his view, blockade as a technology will remain in the future, and crypto-currencies as a product can disappear in a few years from our life as such. Artificial intelligence will occupy a special place in the further world development. According to him, such indicators as GDP dynamics are still important, but proper analysis of the economic situation should also be considered the uneven distribution of wealth, life satisfaction levels, and more.

Another important event held within the framework of the Gaidar forum was the panel discussion "Separation lines in the world economy". The meeting was attended by the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov and a number of foreign experts. During the discussion, the issue of anti-Russian sanctions, as well as free trade at the world level, was raised.

In his speech, Denis Manturov said that Russia in the past few years has become a full-fledged competitor: "Sanctions to a certain extent affected the turnover of our country, but at the same time, our companies have taken the Challenge by activating the production." "We did not set ourselves the task of completely replacing and securing our market, we set the goal of entering global markets," stressed the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. - And today we see the growth of non-raw exports. Growth over the past year was about 19% - a record for the past 10 years. And we are counting on maintaining a steady growth in exports in the coming years."