Direct government support of the country's stock market did not accomplish anything, President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday in a meeting with deputies from the party A Just Russia, where he also urged caution in -making changes to the country's tax code.

"We should admit, in all honesty, that direct government support of the stock market achieved nothing," the president said. "The stock market develops according to its own laws."

As the liquidity crisis snowballed and stock markets faltered last autumn, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the state had allocated 175 billion rubles ($5.3 billion) for investing in "secure, high-yield" Russian securities.

As of last month, it had spent 167 billion rubles of those funds, according to information posted on the Finance Ministry's web site.

Analysts said that while it would be next to impossible for any government to reverse a market decline by buying stocks, the strategy could have had other positive effects.

"It's hard for a government to step in front of the market and drive up prices," said Ronald Smith, head of analytical research at Alfa Bank. "But there were some very large buyers who had margin calls, and without government buying, providing liquidity, we could have seen much more of a rout."

"And, if they bought at the right time, the state could have gotten some really good deals," Smith said.

The benchmark MICEX Index is up 54 percent on the year and is 86 percent off last year's lows. The market was currently showing "not bad growth," although it was too early to say that a trend had developed, Medvedev said.

He also addressed several tax-related topics, including a proposal to lower the value-added tax and income taxes, as well as the introduction of a unified property tax.

Extreme caution should be used in making any changes to taxation legislation, especially during a crisis, Medvedev said.

A unified property tax, however -- an idea that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin revived last week and was brought up again by A Just Russia deputies on Tuesday -- is worthy of discussion, he said.

Putin said last week that the measure, which would charge property owners a single tax for land and for the building standing on it, would increase revenue for city governments.

Medvedev also said a proposal to cut value-added tax was still on the table, "despite what various bureaucrats have said."

"The topic of lowering VAT has been discussed for quite a while, although without any results," Medvedev said. "Everybody seems to agree that it should be done, yet something always gets in our way." He added that it was too early to discuss repealing the flat tax.

The A Just Russia meeting was the second in a series of discussions with the leadership of the country's four main political parties. He met with United Russia last month and plans to hold sessions with the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party.

Speaking at the meeting, Medvedev said a lowering of the entry barrier for political parties to participate in elections was possible. Under current law, parties must meet a 7 percent threshold to gain proportional representation in the State Duma.

"This point depends on the development of our political system. In a certain period, we considered [the 7 percent barrier] desirable. ... But that doesn't mean that this is forever," he said.