Posted: April 17, 2009

(Nanowerk News) According to an article in The Moscow Times, Rusnano and the State Statistics Service are teaming up to develop a system that will track everything produced in Russia that uses nanotechnology, Anatoly Chubais, the state corporation's chief, said Thursday.

"Right now, no one in Russia even knows how much nanotechnology production there is," Chubais said at a meeting of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Interfax reported.

RUSNANO aims to help Russian companies win 3 percent of the global nanotechnology market by 2015 as part of the government's drive to diversify the economy. Nanotechnology broadly refers to any innovations that work on a scale of nanometers, or one-billionth of a meter.

Last year, the country produced 4 billion rubles ($120 million) to 20 billion rubles worth of nanotechnology equipment and materials, Chubais said, citing unspecified experts. The statistics service could report its first findings later this year, he said.

"My expectations are really fuzzy," Chubais said. "It doesn't matter what the starting point is. The main thing is to agree on what and how to count."

Chubais said Rusnano's 2009 budget stipulated investment of 28.5 billion rubles. The company is planning to cut its payroll by 17 percent this year in an effort to reduce costs by 500 million rubles, he said.

Rusnano will also represent the government in an international project to build an X-ray Free Electron Laser in Germany, contributing a total of 250 million euros ($330 million) from 2009 to 2016, Chubais said. In exchange, it will receive a stake in the laser's management company, he said.