GORKI, August 12. /TASS/. Linking science and production, fostering a culture of production, and ensuring a systematic approach to foreign economic activity are fundamental tasks for the country, Chief Executive Officer of Russia’s state corporation Rosatom Alexey Likhachev said.

"For my part, I would highlight three topics that, in my view, are of fundamental importance, yet the mechanisms for addressing them have not yet been fully established. <…> Science and industry <…>, there is no central point of integration in the country," he said at a meeting of the United Russia party’s Chairman Dmitry Medvedev with the expert council for the development of the party’s national program.

R&D activities do exist, and businesses will commission applied projects. However, fundamental research and systematic work on long-term, foundational areas are found only partially within Rosatom’s nuclear weapons complex and partially in Roscosmos, where fundamental research operates within the same management chain, Likhachev said. The head of Rosatom identifies labor productivity in the broad sense of the term as the second key objective.

The third task concerns foreign economic activity. While mechanisms such as the Russian Export Center, intergovernmental commissions, and integration blocs are in place, the priority status of foreign economic activity and the systematic alignment of state support instruments and foreign policy efforts with it has unfortunately been lost, Likhachev noted.