Russia's Econ Ministry raises GDP growth forecast to 3.9% from 2.8% for 2024, to 2.5% from 2.3% for 2025
MOSCOW. Sept 9 (Interfax) - Russia's Economic Development Ministry has raised its economic growth forecast for 2024 to 3.9% from the 2.8% it projected in April, a ministry spokesman told reporters.
The revised macroeconomic forecast for 2024-2027 has been submitted to the government, he said. The forecast, which was reviewed and generally approved by the budget commission, is usually considered along with the draft budget at meetings of the government in the second half of September.
The ministry has also raised its GDP growth forecasts for 2025-2027, to 2.5% from the 2.3% forecast in April for 2025, to 2.6% from 2.3% for 2026 and to 2.8% from 2.4% for 2027.
"We are assessing the rate of economic growth this year more optimistically than we assessed it in April. Now we believe that real GDP growth will amount to about 3.9%, which is fairly high and higher than last year [when the Russian economy grew by 3.6%]," the spokesman said.
"For the subsequent years we forecast some slowdown in real economic growth. This is foremost because the tightening of monetary conditions on the part of the Bank of Russia will kick in one way or the other. But, nonetheless, GDP growth rates will remain positive and amount to a quite respectable 2.5% [in 2025]," he said.
Economic growth will continue amid low unemployment, so "we expect fairly high rates of labor productivity growth, higher than the historical range, which is possible, realistic and is happening right now," he said.
The ministry expects average annual unemployment to be 2.6% throughout the whole forecast period of 2024-2027. Productivity is expected to grow by 3.3% this year, 2.3% in both 2025 and 2026 and 2.8% in 2027.
Asked why there is such a substantial difference between the ministry's economic growth forecast for 2025 and that of the Central Bank, which expects GDP to grow by 3.5-4.0% this year, but only by 0.5-1.5% in 2025 and 1-2% in 2026, the ministry spokesman said that, historically, the Central Bank is generally more conservative in its economic growth forecasts than the ministry.
Asked how tight monetary policy will affect economic growth in 2025, he said "we factored the influence of monetary policy into our forecast, which is why economic growth rates next year are lower than in the previous two years, in other words we took into account the factor of tight monetary conditions."
The consensus forecast of analysts polled by Interfax in early September projects that the Russian economy will expand by 3.6% in 2024 and 1.9% in 2025.