"Now they are speaking about this measure more and more often [closing markets for a week], but it will not change anything in principle: there will be an unregulated, off-exchange market. Then we will have to ban a lot of other things," Alexei Kudrin told journalists in Washington.
"I am not yet intending to do this although market prices have stopped following any logic," he said.
The current global credit crunch started in the United States and quickly spread to Asia and Europe leading to record losses on Russia's financial markets, rising interest rates and a liquidity shortage.
Russia's two stock exchanges, the MICEX and the RTS, did not open for full trading on Friday upon instructions from the financial markets' regulator.
The Russian delegation, led by Kudrin, is on a visit to Washington on October 10-13 to attend an international meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Traditionally, G7/G8 format discussions also take place.
The Russian minister said late Thursday that the global financial crisis has changed the format of the Group of Seven, causing the finance ministers of the major industrialized countries to bring Russia into their discussions.
Although Russia joined the G8 in 1997, it has not been part of G7 meetings, when finance officials from the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, Britain, France and Italy discuss global economic issues.
Kudrin also admitted again the world financial crisis will reduce Russia's GDP, but he said he was optimistic about inflation in Russia. He said that if the consumer price growth could go beyond 11.8% in 2008, then only "insignificantly."
He said GDP was earlier expected to grow 7.8% in 2008 and 6.7% in 2009, but now assessments are 7-7.5% and 5.7-6.7% correspondingly.
Kudrin said the measures that Russian authorities are taking to support the financial markets are not excessive.
The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved Friday anti-crisis packages worth a total of $86 billion. The government has earmarked $50 billion of budget funds to banks and firms to refinance foreign debt, and some $36 billion to key banks in subordinated loans.
