Forget about Russia's troubled bid for membership in the World Trade Organization -- the economy is healthy and set to keep on growing next year.

That's the message coming from some of the country's leading economists from the Association of Independent Centers for Economic Analysis.

"Economic growth has exceeded all our expectations," Yevsei Gurvich, head of the Finance Ministry's Economic Expert Group, said Wednesday.

The government has upped its forecast for economic expansion in 2003 to about 6.7 percent, marking the fifth consecutive year of growth. Originally it had predicted the economy would grow just 4.5 percent this year.

Consistently high oil prices played a large role in buoying the economy, although some economists argue that the country is diversifying and becoming less dependent on oil exports.

"Next year will be very similar to this year, according to our forecasts," Gurvich said. "And this is good for all of us as Russian citizens."

The continuing surge of growth, combined with qualitative changes in the economy, is making the country's stalled application for WTO membership less urgent at the moment, the economists said.

Furthermore, entry into the organization is unrealistic for another four to five years anyway. Currently the country is at loggerheads with the European Union, which as a precondition for WTO membership is demanding that Moscow stop subsidizing energy prices.

"It is hard to imagine that [Russia] would accept that," said Leonid Grigoryev, president of the economic analysis umbrella group AICEA.

Instead of bending to demands from the EU or the United States, Russia should wait until it can join on its own terms, said Andrei Klepach, director of Development Center, an independent analytical group.

"We will enter the WTO ... but not because we satisfied their demands. The key factor will be that our economy will become as attractive and interesting to them as China's," Klepach said.

[By staff writer Alla Startseva.]