With the beginning of economic recovery, which we expect to occur in the last quarter of this year, real wages will grow. At the moment, salaries are worth fifty-five percent of their value in 1991, just before the introduction of Russian reforms which we were obliged to implement. However, output has also been halved since 1991 and it is simply not reasonable to expect real salaries to grow in such circumstances. Companies have not resorted to dismissals as a method of reducing costs. If they had, salaries could have been higher.
People understand that and prefer earning a lower salary to losing their jobs.
It has yet to be solved. At the moment, we have a stand-by arrangement with the IMF, last year we were granted World Bank rehabilitation credits and this year we got loans for structural changes. We have also received loans from the European Bank and the Asian Development Bank. These loans total about USD 1.4 billion and we have also had some international assistance. This is not a big foreign debt and with our exports, which already amount to USD 4.2 billion per year, our credit obligations won't be hard to meet.