Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov promised on Monday to consider within a definite period of time the proposal of the Ministry for Economic Development to set up a new federal agency to attract foreign investments to Russia.

"I want a timeout to consider this suggestion,"

Fradkov told a meeting of the Consultative Council for Foreign Investments here on Monday.

The premier reacted in this way to the initiative of Gherman Gref, the minister for economic development, who voiced the idea of setting up such an agency, which foreign partners had repeatedly expressed to him. Such an agency "could assume the role of coordinator of the effort to implement the comprehensive program to improve Russia's image", Gref believes. He noted that there were such agencies in other countries and that they were quite resultative.

Fradkov, for his part, stated that time was needed to consider this problem, since "the proposal is new and we are careful about any changes in the governing structures". "We are eager to enhance the effectiveness of such structures, but no additional bureaucratic obstacles should be created, the efficiency of control should not be harmed, and the corruption factor should not be increased," he stressed. "We shall proceed from the need to optimise the structure, to increase its effectiveness, depending on the availability of experienced personnel, specialists, and professional managers," he stated.

Moreover, Fradkov called both on foreign investors and the Russian ministries and other agencies, as well as on companies, to perfect analytic work on the problem of Russian economy's investment opportunities. "Otherwise, we shall get a situation when, on the one hand, the investments will grow, but the country's image, from the formal point of view, will not improve,"

he stressed. Addressing the foreign investors, present at the meeting, Fradkov specially noted that their actions were in many ways "an indicator by which administrative bodies are guided in Russia".

According to Gref, an important problem for Russia at the present time is "incompatibility of the investment climate and the investment image, when, in spite of the 44 per cent growth of foreign investments in the fist six months of this year, Russia's investment rating, on the contrary, has dropped by almost ten points".