May 7, 2009 — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is criticizing the country’s strategy of developing its technology sector through state-owned corporations, singling out Rusnano as an example, according to a report in The Moscow Times.

Rusnano is the Russian state-owned nanotech business group that recently pledged heavy investment in Canada’s neglected nanotech sector and set the goal of winning 3% of the global nanotechnology market by 2015

Medvedev said state-owned companies like Rusnano, headed by Anatoly Chubais, are “unlikely” to prove successful, according to the report.

“[Rusnano] is the kind of instrument that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t work at all,” The Moscow Times quoted Medvedev as saying. He called the company a “large structure that has a lot of money and that still has to understand how to correctly spend it” so that it is not blamed for wasting it in the future.