In the economy

U -turn

October 17, 2006. Maxim Blanc

No one, probably, will undertake to dispute the fact that in any country, in any state there are turning points from which a new life stage begins, often very, very different from the previous one. Moreover, these moments are recognized as turning only after some-sometimes very long-time. Often (although far from always), this awareness comes only after rather serious shocks - economic, and, sometimes, political.

However, let's move on to the essence. For more than a month now, world oil prices are falling. They fell by a quarter - from 78 to 58 dollars per barrel of Brent mixture, which is used to calculate the price of Russian oil (Urals, by the way, at an indicative auction in the RTS fell to $ 54). It would seem that this does not threaten us with anything serious. Well, there will be less dollars in a stabilization fund - most fellow citizens will not even notice this. Moreover, if a drop in oil prices leads to a cheap of gasoline, the jubilant masses will begin to rejoice at the next round of the fall in the London or New York exchanges. The domestic manufacturers exhausted by the “Dutch disease”, having rolled up their sleeves, will begin to crowd out imports from the Russian market, and some economists who periodically reasoning about the “oil curse” will finally wipe the cold sweat from their hot foreheads. Start the current drop in prices at least a couple of years ago, here you could put an end to, having finally rejoiced at the prudence of the government. However, now everything is far from so simple. And the fault of this is a reversal in state policy and, which is much worse, the public consciousness, which has finally took shape and lined up in the consistent system recently.

The difference between the first and second term of President Putin is visible to the naked eye. And the point here is not only in the president. The liberalism of the early Putin, at least in the field of economics, was forced and dictated by the objective circumstances that developed at the turn of the century. It is worth recalling that back in 1999, when Vladimir Vladimirovich was appointed prime minister, Russia was in a state of default, the gold and foreign exchange reserves were almost at zero, and the oil price fell below $ 10. And even if by the time Putin was elected President, oil was already more expensive than $ 20 per barrel, no guarantee that it would not fall again to 10, no one had no one. Hence the balanced budgets, and a tough financial policy, and attempts to work on improving the investment climate (which costs one campaign with voluntary adoption of the corporate governance code), and tax reform. By the way, it was not without “excesses”: today this is the reluctance of the permanent Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin to serve the debts of the Paris Club on the grounds that payments were not laid in the federal budget (the Russian authorities planned to restructure these debts), and is perceived as a historical joke. And at that time, the government tried to save on everything, inventing such, not quite adequate excuses.

The basis of economic policy at that time was a phased decrease in non -prototype expenses and the privatization of everything that could be privatized, since the thesis that the state could not be an effective owner or an effective investor was questioned by anyone. One of the most progressive pension reforms was prepared on this wave; The Minister-Yendologist German Gref proclaimed a course on the debit of the economy, which was supposed to improve the business climate, overcome corruption and, again, significantly reduce the state apparatus and expenses for it. The authorities were ready for any development of events in world raw materials.

Today the situation is almost the opposite in everything. Nobody recalls the business climate, except Evgeny Yasin. Talk about a decrease in the fiscal burden on the economy was replaced by a discussion about the degree of social responsibility of the business, and there are more and more those who believe that any measure will be not enough in this discussion. Reforms in the social sphere resulted in multi -billion dollar national projects and year from year to year more generous indexations of pensions and salaries of state employees. Administrative reform led to an increase in the number of officials and even more growth in the cost of maintaining the state apparatus. Andrei Illarionov remembers the reduction of non -prototype expenses, but he has not been working in the presidential administration for a long time, and now he is generally leaving for working abroad. The state decided to take the modernization and diversification of the economy into its own hands, which resulted in renovation of a number of enterprises in different sectors.

Nobody, more recently, questioned the thesis about how badly to be a raw materials appendage, was smoothly transformed into the concept of an energy superpower. The bet on private, including foreign, investors changed to squeeze them out of existing or planned projects: in the midst of a campaign against agreements on the division of products in the Sakhalin deposits, a statement recently followed that Gazprom would independently develop the Shtokman field-all these are the events of the last month or two.

It makes no sense to discuss how capable or is not able to return to Russia the status of a “great power”. Since all external, economic, social, industrial (about five years ago and the words of this in everyday life-or already, as it was more likely, has not been), the state’s energy policy is being built today not just at high, but at constantly growing oil prices. After a long abstinence, the state immediately gained so many long -term obligations, immediately got into so many “strategic” and “priority” projects that annually requiring multi -million -dollar investments that the money for the implementation of everything that was planned may not be enough, even if oil will rise in price to $ 100 per barrel. In addition to social obligations and in a strange way, there is also “defense”, aircraft industry, traditional and nuclear energy, the development of space, electronics, bio- and nanotechnology, the construction of the grandiose East Siberian oil pipeline, to fill out the exploration and development of East Siberian deposits.

Of course, all this (with the exception of social programs) will be financed not only from the budget. Great hopes are assigned to the so-called private-state partnership and even larger-on two, as it were, private monsters, Gazprom and Rosneft. After all, as the experience of the current year showed, for these companies to collect a dozen or two billions of dollars, placing an additional issue of shares or bonds on the exchange, is not a problem. More precisely, there was no problem until the price of energy grew, setting a new historical maximum every week.

Or take the current foreign policy of Russia, where Gazprom plays an enormous role, almost more than the Foreign Ministry. Did someone in the Kremlin or Gazprom take into account, binding the price of gas to global oil prices, that this stick is about the two ends and the prices can not only grow? The current authorities can no longer abandon their obligations, as well as to reduce imperial pathos - there are two election years ahead. Moreover, the case is complicated by the need to shove the successor to the presidential chair, which requires additional abundant financial “lubrication”.

Well, yes, these are things. In the end, nothing terrible will happen if a pair of “projects of the century” into “breakthrough” industries will turn into a protracted long -rise, and the Minister of Finance, who has knocked out the right to invest in a stabilization fund, has nothing to play in world financial markets. It is much more interesting to try to predict what threatens the continuation of the fall in oil prices - if it really happens - everyone else.

The first, of course, will suffer the Russian stock market, since most “blue chips” are companies working with energy. The fall, if it happens, will occur just at the moment when the population was finally filled with faith in the action in general - both in the action of Gazprom and the “people's” Rosneft in particular. The influx of funds only in open share funds since the beginning of this year exceeded 15 billion rubles. The fall can provoke an equally active outflow of funds, which in turn will cause a new round of decline.

“Saved” money can provoke a short surge in consumer demand for long -term goods, cars and real estate, which will sell apartments purchased as investments. However, the increase in prices in these segments, if it happens, will not last long, and the case will end with the next “bursting bubble”. But in honor there will be a dollar again. The American currency, which has already begun to play a point at the point from world competitors, is also growing in Russia in Russia, although there is no need to talk about exciting demand: inertia citizens continue to sell dollars more than they buy.

The fall in the stock market is fraught with another nuisance. If it happens before the end of this year, it is likely that managing companies that have access to pension savings of citizens will play a minus, especially since the current generation of traders in their bulk on the falling market is not used to working. This will give an extra trump card (which is important in the pre -election year) to the opponents of the pension reform, and the authorities can “bury” even those stunted sprouts of non -state pension provision that managed to break on severe Russian grounds.

The decrease in oil prices, albeit not immediately, but will affect real incomes of the population. This can be an incentive for blowing (well, if a smooth) of another “bubble” formed in the market of consumer and mortgage lending. A drop in real estate prices can aggravate the situation. The crisis of "bad debts" is able to provoke a banking crisis.

The drawn script may be too pessimistic, but armed is the one who is warned. The last three decades in our country (no matter how it was called at different periods of time), turning points in all areas of life are largely associated with fluctuations in world oil prices. And the experience of these three decades clearly demonstrates that in practice, even the most pessimistic script is too rainbow.

Maxim Blanc

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