As president, Dmitry Medvedev will have a tough time making good on campaign pledges to tackle the country's most pressing economic worries, foreign business representatives and analysts said Monday.

But despite that, the business community broadly welcomed Medvedev's crushingly predictable victory at Sunday's poll, with Vladimir Putin set to become his prime minister. "The more boring the outcome, the better as far as business is concerned," said Neil Cooper, director of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce. "Continuity and stability are the two things that investors want to see in this country."

During his muted campaigning for the presidency, Medvedev laced his rare stump speeches with economically liberal pledges to remedy economic concerns. These included promises to slash corruption, control inflation, improve infrastructure, reform the pension system and reduce the number of bureaucrats on the boards of state companies.

At the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum on Feb. 15, Medvedev summed up his policies as concentrating on the four "I's" - institutions, infrastructure, innovation and investment.

With Putin as a potential prime minister, policy uncertainty within the government and between the Kremlin and the White House will likely decrease, said Alan Rousso, chief political adviser at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Medvedev would have to perform a tricky balancing act between keeping the rate down and increasing spending on much-needed infrastructure. "However dangerous inflation is, as long as it remains manageable the emphasis will always be on improving the infrastructure," said Tom Mundy, an analyst at Renaissance Capital.