It is good to see that IMF advice has received such extensive coverage in your newspaper recently. Like Vedomosti ("Looks Like Russia", editorial of March 5), the IMF believes that there are valuable lessons to be drawn from comparing economic policies in two countries. Although you refer to one distinction between Kazakhstan and Russia, the possible different incidence of tax cuts, there is a much more important reason for the different emphasis in the IMF's policy advice. The oil and gas sector is a much larger part of the Kazakh economy than is the case in Russia. Projections show an impressive increase in Kazakh oil and gas output in the years to come, so the prospective scale of government revenues from oil and gas is correspondingly much greater in Kazakhstan. This is why we have been advising the Kazakh authorities to prepare medium and long-term plans for using oil and gas revenues, for example, in health and education, an enlarged public investment program, or to finance tax cuts. But oil and gas revenues in Russia are not large enough to pursue similar policies. In these circumstances, the extra revenues from high oil prices should be saved until the price falls, so they can be drawn upon to avoid having to cut expenditures or raise other taxes.