Salaries paid to Russians made up 40% of...

Experts at the FBK audit consulting company told the paper the tendency has two implications.

The first is that the country is eating up its resources and the second is that Russians" salaries lag far behind those of their European neighbors.

Vremya Novostey said while the Russian government allocated millions of rubles to ailing Russian companies, it prohibited company owners from carrying out large-scale redundancies.

Other experts have said the figures show that Russia is a no longer a country of cheap labor.

According to a Federal State Statistics Service report, the monthly wage in Russia in March 2010 is around 20,158 rubles ($695).

"We have stopped being a country with a cheap labor force," Vremya Novostei quoted the head of the regional program of the Independent Institute for Social Policy, Natalia Zubarevich, as saying.

MOSCOW, April 30 (RIA Novosti