MOSCOW, April 8, 2008 (AFP) - President-elect Dmitry Medvedev Tuesday urged industry leaders in Russia to focus on small enterprises in a bid to boost production throughout the country's oil and gas-dominated economy.

'Productivity in some industries is sometimes 20 times less than in developed countries,' he said in a statement released on his internet site after a Kremlin meeting with business leaders.

To close the gap, he said it was 'necessary to use the potential of small enterprises', citing their capacity to 'react more flexibly' than large state-owned companies.

Medvedev also called on the business elite -- represented by directors of petroleum, aluminium and gas giants Lukoil, Rusal and Gazprom -- to come up with plans to increase their output, as part of an economic growth strategy aimed at 2020.

The survival of small Russian companies, whose numbers mushroomed in the 1990s, is often presented as a problem by the business world.