ITAR-TASS, Russia
April 15 2006

R&D expenditures in CIS countries 2-4 times lower than in 1991

MOSCOW, April 15 (Itar-Tass) — Current research and development
expenditures in CIS countries (except Russia and Ukraine) are 2-4
times lower than in 1991, panellists said at the 1st Forum of CIS
Scientific and Creative Intellectuals in Moscow on Saturday.

`R and D expenditures in CIS countries, except Russia and Ukraine,
have remained practically on the same level over the past several
years and have not exceeded 0.1-0.7 percent of GDP,’ the Forum’s
Science and Technology Section said.

The panelists noted that this is 2-4 times less than in 1991. The
situation is much better only Russia and Ukraine.

`In Russia, the proportion of R and D expenditures in the gross
domestic product has been growing steadily since 2000 and had reached
the 1991 level by 2004,’ they said.

According to an academician of the Armenian Academy of Sciences, the
director of the Research Institute of Biochemistry, Konstantin
Karagezyan, `The decisions made today should be brought to the
attention of the governments and presidents of the CIS countries so
that they could address the problems of science immediately and
without delay.’

He said `science is falling apart in CIS countries’ and stressed,
`Its humiliating treatment must be revised immediately.’

The panelists proposed to create a common electronic library of
Russian-language scientific and reference literature on the Internet
and introduce a system of training for so-called `science managers’