The crisis passes better

Experts of the Gaidar forum - about the prospects of the Russian economy

The Gaidar forum opened in Moscow. Experts, including the new Minister of Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin, agreed with each other: the economy needs to be developed further, no matter what.

On January 12, the 8th Gaidar Forum was opened-a major economic conference, which annually takes place in Moscow on the basis of the Presidential Academy of National Economy. Within three days, representatives of the Russian and international financial elite, businessmen, academics and politicians will meet at the discussion venues (about 13 thousand guests and 800 speakers are expected). Participants will discuss a wide range of issues, but the central theme of the forum is the search for new ways of economic development of Russia, which is in the recession for the third year in a row.

On one of the morning panels, experts of the World Bank presented a comprehensive report on the state of the Russian economy. Its main problem, according to experts, is the wear of the main infrastructure, and the recipe for getting out of the crisis is a policy to “resume performance growth” and improve human capital. At the same time, according to the bank’s settlements, even in the absence of serious reforms of Russia's GDP this year, it will increase by 1.5% - so far this is one of the most optimistic forecasts. During the discussion of the report, the deputy chairman of the Central Bank, Ksenia Yudaeva, spoke of risks for Russia to slide into “chronic stagnation”.

The head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Maxim Oreshkin, who replaced the detainee in the ministerial chair in November for receiving a bribe by Alexei Ulyukaev, outlined the main task of the government for 2017: increasing the level of economic certainty, including stabilizing the level of inflation and the tax system necessary to increase the influx of investment in Russia. The activities of the Cabinet of Ministers to support the economy will not contain “no revolutions”, promised Oreshkin. Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets made a report on social development. The head of the government, Golodets, saw in the restoration of income to the population, simultaneously criticizing Russian business and labor migrants:

“Employers, underestimating their workers’s salary, do not think about the future, respectively, there is no growth to long sustainable development, but only a trend in short -term, which poorly affects the economy.” 7 million migrants living in Russia, according to Golodets, work “with a“ minus ”sign and create“ very serious social costs ”for the state.

The performance of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev contained several not new theses: the crisis is better than expected, but for long-term growth, structural reforms and the transition to a new digital economy are needed. The main barriers for the economic growth of Medvedev were considered a shortage of investment and “loans paralysis”. The prime minister’s political statement was a statement that the format of the “big eight” and “seven”, from which Russia was excluded in 2014, was outdated, only “big twenty” remains relevant.

Some news went to the press during the break between expert venues. The head of the Ministry of Communications Nikolai Nikiforov, for example, condemned the initiative of the Ministry of Culture to collect fines from users for downloading pirate content, and the Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov on the sidelines of the forum discussed retail prices for vodka-according to him, excise taxes on it grew by 20 rubles, but in 2018-19. Do not change. Other changes in the tax system that the president announced in the December message to the Federal Assembly may become one of the most important topics of the forum. On January 14, a large panel with the participation of the economic bloc of the government will be dedicated to the discussion of tax reform.