Expected stagnation

Judging by the latest data on the dynamics of industrial production, the Russian economy has firmly entered into a depressive state. After the failure in April (by 6.5%) and May (1.5%), the production of products stabilized and with slight fluctuations continues to remain at the same level. Therefore, with some reservations we can assume that a new equilibrium in industry has been achieved and, most likely, for a long time, since the factors because of which this fall, and then stabilization, occurred, still continue to act.

As it is well clear, the main reason for the drop in production in Russia was the depressive state of world commodity markets, caused mainly by the policy of OPEC countries in the field of pricing for hydrocarbons. Since oil prices have fallen more than doubles (and behind them-gas and coal prices), the income of the exporting countries of hydrocarbons decreased sharply, which led to a reduction in their demand for imports and, accordingly, orders that they placed among manufacturers in other countries.

Although Russian manufacturers do not directly suffer from reducing demand from the OPEC countries - they are not large suppliers of goods for these X countries - but their indirect losses are quite decent. Since they sell their products, as a rule, to European and Chinese companies that produce goods for export to OPEC countries, reducing supplies to oil-producing countries due to a fall in demand, these companies, in turn, reduce their demand for Russian goods.

Therefore, although the physical volume of hydrocarbons exports from Russia has not fundamentally changed (oil and oil products exported, natural gas and coal - decreased), the export of other goods, mainly intermediate, was reduced quite significantly, which served as the root cause of the general fall in industrial products.

The drop in revenue from the export of hydrocarbons has acted another factor in the reduction in production - the devaluation of the ruble. This devaluation caused a strong increase in import of imports, after which enterprises that use imported materials, components and equipment have sharply increased cost and price of products, which led to a significant drop in its sales in the domestic market.

The same drop in export income was reduced and internal demand. Although earlier, most of the export income, as a rule, was spent on the purchase of foreign goods, services and assets, but some of them were still spent on the domestic market, maintaining demand and release on it. But now, after the fall of these income, something has ceased to get into the domestic market, and this also led to the fall of production.

Unfortunately, in addition to the fall of oil and gas prices, the Russian economy has to operate in the conditions of the outflow of capital and, as a result, high interest rates. Sectoric sanctions imposed by Western countries against a number of large Russian companies and banks did not allow them to make new borrowings and refinance the old capital in world markets. The previously accumulated debt had to be extinguished, which sharply reduced the volume of disposable resources in the Russian economy and led to an increase in rates to a level at which the cost -effective work of a significant number of enterprises became difficult.

The growth of bets, on the one hand, reduced the demand for loans from manufacturers, they were forced to reduce the amount of working capital and, accordingly, reduce the production of products. On the other hand, consumers, whose access to loans also turned out to be limited, could no longer purchase in their previous quantities long -term goods, primarily cars and housing.

It is clear that the fall in production could have occurred in much larger volumes if two factors had not interfered with it - the same ruble devaluation and strengthening state support of the economy. Although devaluation increases imports and leads to an increase in the cost of domestic assembly goods with a large share of foreign materials and components, but, at the same time, it cleanses the domestic market from the final products of foreign production. In theory, Russian manufacturers had to use the elimination of competitors and fill in their products market niches, previously occupied by imported goods.

Devalvation, in addition to cleaning the domestic market from foreign goods, has another consequence - it increases the nominal income of manufacturers, especially exporters. Their profit increases sharply, which allows them, firstly, to pay off the debt to banks in the national currency and not to carry the burden of high interest rates and, secondly, to finance the expansion of production without resorting to expensive bank lending. For the first half of 2015, net profit (profit and loss) increased by 37.5%, so enterprises will largely be able to compensate for the reduction of external financing by internal financial resources.

Another source of industry stabilization is the so -called State support, which mainly consists in the growth of state demand funded by the growth of public debt or monetary issue. In principle, this measure is quite standard and is used by a large number of countries with developed domestic farming. For this, state budgets of developed countries expand their expenses in excess of income received, in the amount, as a rule, equal to the fall of the demand of the private sector, and replace it with state demand.

But for us this path has been ordered. The government considers its priority task to achieve a reduction in inflation (which has greatly jumped due to the devaluation of the ruble), therefore, it is extremely reluctant to expand the expenses in excess of income. Therefore, in the near future, the Russian industry can count mainly only on subsidizing interest rates and part of the capital costs of enterprises, as well as the provision of state guarantees for loans. But these means to increase production to the pre -crisis level are likely not enough, so stagnation is provided for a long time.