Structure of GDP growth rates in Russia up to 2024

By the fall of 2021, the Russian economy had practically overcome the crisis caused by coronavirus pandemic and sharp drop in oil prices in the first half of 2020, having returned in terms of GDP, industrial production and investment in fixed assets to pre-crisis levels. At the same time, the prospects for further growth of the Russian economy remain uncertain, since both in the short and long term, the balance of factors affecting the growth rate of Russia’s GDP is shifted to a negative area. These external factors include the growing risks of a new financial and/or economic crisis in the world’s leading economies (including China), imposing large-scale sanctions against Russia in connection with a special operation in Ukraine, the instability of world commodity markets, as well as the processes of decarbonization and restructuring of the world economy. Internal factors of growth comprise increased investment activity of private and state-owned companies (and in the field of national projects), expansion of non-resource non-energy exports, while internal growth constraints comprise possible decline in the working-age population in Russia and slow growth of the real personal income. According to the official forecast by the RF Ministry of Economic Development, after the recovery acceleration of the economy by 4.2% in 2021 (the first estimate by Rosstat — 4.7%), GDP growth will stabilize at about 3% per year in subsequent years. However, it is lower than expected growth rates of the world economy, but it is significantly higher than the average growth rates of the Russian economy over the past decade (about 0.7% per year).

To reveal the growth rates structure, which corresponds to anticipated economic dynamics in Russia, we have used an approach based on identifying three components of GDP growth rates — structural, foreign trade, and business cycle ones. In this article a new decomposition method was applied, which assumes the neutrality of the foreign trade component if the oil price is at the average long-term values.

In case of achievement of the RF Ministry of Economic Development forecast, actual and structural unemployment indicators convergence may lead to a shortage of labor in certain sectors of the Russian economy in 2022—2023. The solution to this problem lies in the sphere of external and internal migration policy intensification and measures for promoting inter-sectoral labor mobility. Estimates of the output gap show that it is advisable to pursue a stimulating fiscal policy in 2022 with a transition to neutrality in 2023—2024. Supporting the global spread of vaccines against coronavirus infection and the recovery of the global economy will contribute to an increase in oil prices and in the foreign trade component of economic growth in Russia.

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