OECD improves Russia’s GDP forecast for 2023-2024

The Russian economy will decline by 1.5% this year, and by 0.4% next year, follows from the June forecast Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Forecasts for both years turned out to be higher than in March: then the organization expected a contraction in 2023 by 2.1% and by 0.5% in 2024. In November 2022, OECD analysts predicted a decline of 5.6% in 2023 at once. , but only by 0.2% in 2024.

According to the OECD, global economic growth will slow to 2.7% this year after 3.3% in 2022. Next year, global growth will accelerate to 2.9%. In its forecast released on June 6, the World Bank expects growth of real world GDP by 2.1% after 3.1% in 2022. In 2024, the indicator will grow by 2.4%.

Forecasts on the dynamics of the Russian economy were also improved earlier by the IMF (expects GDP growth of the Russian Federation by 0.7% in 2023 and by 1.3% in 2024) and the European Commission (predicts a fall of 0.9% in 2023 and a rise of 1.3% in 2024).

In April, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov announced that the agency improved forecast for the Russian economy in 2023 from a decline of 0.8% (in the September forecast) to growth of 1.2%.

Later, the Bank of Russia also improved the forecast for Russian GDP dynamics: the regulator now expects economic growth of 0.5-2% in 2023, although back in February it expected a decline. Economists interviewed by the Central Bank at the end of May predict growth of the Russian economy by 0.8% at the end of the year.

According to the Ministry of Economics, Russia’s GDP growth in April made up 3.3% in annual terms after a decline of 0.7% in March and 2.6% in February. The positive dynamics is due to the low base in 2022, when the indicator decreased by 3%. According to preliminary estimates of Rosstat, it decreased by 1.9% in annual terms.