Deputy Prime Minister Belousov allowed GDP growth at the end of the year

The decline in Russia’s GDP at the end of the year will not exceed 1%, but the dynamics may turn out to be positive, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov believes. “There are opportunities to go into plus at the end of 2023. This is a probabilistic story,” he told reporters.

Earlier, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its January review improved its forecast for the Russian economy in 2023 – from a decline of 2.3%, expected in October, to growth of 0.3%. This assessment turned out to be much more optimistic than the official forecasts of the Russian authorities.

According to the expectations of the Ministry of Economic Development, by the end of 2023, the economy will decline by 0.8%. The Bank of Russia forecasts a decline in the range of 1-4%. At the end of December, Belousov noted that GDP dynamics would be in the range from zero to minus 1%. “In this sense, the IMF evaluates us even better than we evaluate ourselves,” Belousov emphasized. The first quarter of 2022 has been very positive, so the high base effect will continue, “but then a lot of things will depend on intra-annual dynamics,” he added.

“I am not ready to give probabilistic forecasts now, but we will work to make it happen (GDP growth in 2023 – Ved.),” Belousov said. At the end of 2022, Russia’s GDP, according to preliminary estimates, decreased by 2.5%, President Vladimir Putin reported in mid-January. According to Rosstat, in the third quarter, Russian GDP fell by 3.7% in annual terms after 4.1% in the second quarter and growth of 3.5% in the first quarter.

Rosstat will publish official GDP statistics for last year on February 17. According to the Ministry of Economic Development for January-November, the decline was 2.1%. Earlier, 28 analysts surveyed by the Central Bank improved their expectations for the economy this year – now they expect a 1.5% decline in GDP against 2.4% expected in December. According to their estimates, last year the decline was also smaller – 2.5% instead of 2.9%. At the same time, experts worsened the forecast for the growth of the Russian economy in 2024 by 0.3 percentage points, to 1.2%, and left the forecast for 2025 unchanged (+1.5%).