Comments on the RBK daily’s article: “Experts: GDP Growth will be Three Times Lower than the Government Expects”
The economic situation in Russia is far from being an ideal one: GDP quarterly growth rates have been slowing down from the middle of the last year, while the base types of activities used for evaluation of GDP dynamics have stagnated from the beginning of 2012, reports RBK daily quoting the research - Our Economic Forecast: Two as the Maximum? - carried out by the Development Center of NRU HSE.
In reality, there is nothing surprising in the actual and forecasted data on Russian economic growth. As was repeatedly stated, the Russian economy stopped growing after GDP had reached its potential level. For that reason, either the expansion of the domestic demand, or high oil prices (according to the data of the IMF, in 2010 the price on the Brent oil amounted to $79 a barrel, while in 2011 it grew to $104 a barrel; under the 2012 forecast it was to amount to $106.2 a barrel) are no longer incentives behind high economic growth rates; in the long-term period achievement and maintenance of such rates requires change of the existing growth model.
М.V. Kazakova, PhD (Economics), Head of the Economic Development Department