Russian state-run companies should increase investment in hi-tech technologies and step up cooperation with the scientific research sector, a presidential aide said on Friday. "Of the 22 [leading state companies]..., only one spends sums comparative with the average foreign figures," Arkady Dvorkovich said. This only company is Russian Railways, which spends 0.4 percent of its earnings on innovation projects, Dvorkovich said. Dvorkovich said about two thirds of Russian state-owned companies had failed to draw up innovation development programs on how to increase research investment by the end of 2010, as instructed by President Dmitry Medvedev. The president has set modernization of the Russian economy as his main goal and prizes the Skolkovo hi-tech research hub, dubbed Russia`s Silicon Valley, as the first fruit of the project. The presidential aide said innovation development in the state sector would be under discussion at a session of the modernization and technology commission on January 31 near the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.