Elite OMON troops cordoned off a one-kilometer perimeter around the Marriott Grand hotel, where the two-day forum is being held. Traffic was not closed off on Tverskaya Ulitsa in front of the hotel, but metal barriers were erected on sidewalks for blocks around the meeting site.

This is the first time that the forum, which holds its main annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, has come to Russia. The talks coincide with a regular meeting of the Foreign Investment Advisory Committee headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.

While the FIAC usually focuses on "what you think" questions, the main goal of the forum is to tell potential investors "what to do" if they want to invest in Russia now.

EBRD President Jean Lemierre set the mood Monday evening by declaring that an economic slowdown in the West will have only a limited effect on Russia's economy.

"Nobody in the world is immune from the slowdown, and Russia is not immune, of course," Lemierre said after FIAC talks. "The progress of reform that has been done in Russia is such that we at the EBRD think that the impact of the slowdown in the world economy would be very limited in Russia."

His comments were echoed at the World Economic Forum.

"Russia's economy was falling when the rest of the world was growing, but now the time has come to change places," said Yevgeny Yasin, widely considered to be the father of Russian liberal reforms.

Economists at the forum predicted that Russia's GDP will grow 4 percent to 4.5 percent in 2002. The government expects growth of 5.5 percent this year after a record 8.3 percent growth in 2000.

The economists also said industrial production will increase 4 percent to 7 percent in 2002 while inflation will stay within a band of 13 percent to 15 percent. They said the ruble will not exceed 33 to the U.S. dollar.

A report released by the forum on Monday said Russia can expect solid economic growth in the years to come -- if more structural reforms are carried out. "Real GDP growth of 4 to 5 percent per year, driven by private investment, is ... conceivable provided the outlook remains favorable for oil prices and Russia makes progress in three essential areas, where it still lags behind," said the Russia Transition Report, naming the key areas as corporate governance and transparency, the restructuring of natural monopolies and the banking system.

"The reform of the banking sector is long overdue," the report said. "Today, most of the 1,300 Russian banks serve mainly as captive treasury operations to the companies that control them, depicting a strong segmentation of the market."

The government in recent weeks has tackled banking reforms in earnest. A draft restructuring plan for the sector has been drawn up and the Central Bank is supposed to report to the Cabinet within days on how to implement the proposal.

Johannes Linn, a World Bank vice president, also addressed banking at the FIAC. "People don't trust banks, and banks don't trust their customers," Linn said. "As a result, resources do not easily flow to those parts of the economy where they are most needed and new business are slow to develop."

The Russia Transition Report said the government needs to push ahead with the restructuring of natural monopolies such as the Railways Ministry, Unified Energy Systems and Gazprom.

"The reform process has reached a stage where everything now depends on the difficult implementation and execution of reforms on the ground," Linn said. "Now most of the reforms are in the hands of parliament and the government itself."

To accelerate the process -- and perhaps show some goodwill -- President Vladimir Putin called on the government Monday to expedite the drafting of reform legislation. The bills, which have been under preparation for the past 12 to 15 months, are needed to move ahead with structural reforms, Putin said.

The president is to address the forum Tuesday.

Forum organizers said several big deals between Russian and foreign companies will be signed on the sidelines of the talks Tuesday. They declined to give details.

The heightened security in downtown Moscow on Monday was a sign that officials were determined to avoid the anti-globalization protests that have plagued other World Economic Forum talks.

As it turned out, the precautions were hardly necessary. By midafternoon, not a single anti-globalist could be seen near the venue. A dozen or so elderly people milled around the barricades with Soviet flags. Police detained 13 people.

The only visible effect of the security measures was the inconvenience caused to Muscovites unable to get to work or home. "This is what they call globalization," shrieked one elderly woman after failing to convince an OMON officer that she was a housekeeper in an office behind the barrier.

A muscular man who said he was in a hurry to get to a business engagement also could not persuade the troops to let him through.

But the hassle would seem to be a small price to pay for the attention that the forum is giving Russia and its economy.

"Russia is now on a different stage of transition, from the just-born to the mature market economy," Andrei Illarionov, Putin's economic adviser, said at the forum.

"I hope that in 10 years we will talk about these reforms as a done deal and by that time Russia will be not only a member of the WTO but also of the OECD," he said.