Central Bank analysts doubted record GDP growth according to Rosstat

Surprising many experts and officials, the record high estimate by Rosstat of Russia's GDP growth in 2018 - 2.3% - was most likely a statistical focus and will be revised in the future. In reality, the economy has hardly accelerated noticeably, according to the bulletin of the Central Bank's Research and Forecasting Department, released today.

More. The actual growth of Russia's GDP in 2018 could be lower than the Rosstat estimate and range from 1.7% (the figure obtained from quarterly estimates of the Central Bank) to 2.3%, follows from the document.

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• The contribution of construction to the acceleration of economic growth, according to Rosstat, amounted to 0.25 percentage points. But due to what the construction growth of 5.3%, which gave this contribution, was obtained, it is not entirely clear from the statistics, experts write: "the dynamics of construction work does not correlate with indirect indicators of business activity in construction." In 2018, the loading of construction materials and cement in the Russian Railways network, as well as brick, cement and concrete, decreased.
• Rosstat has credited some large investment projects completed in 2018, writes the Central Bank Department. The Ministry of Economic Development has already de facto named one of these investment projects - last year, Novatek commissioned the last line of the Yamal LNG plant.
• The next revisions of construction statistics will transfer part of these volumes to the figures of previous years. “In this case, GDP growth in 2016 and 2017 will be higher than current estimates, and lower in 2018,” the bulletin says.

Russia's GDP growth in 2018 after the revision is likely to be slightly higher than in 2017 , when it grew by 1.6%. The dynamics of the PMI composite index also indicates a slowdown in economic growth in 2018. “It is quite possible that after a series of revisions to estimates, the final dynamics of GDP for 2017–2018 will be closer to the picture that the dynamics of PMI indices have recently shown,” Central Bank analysts cautiously write.

Context. Economic Development Minister Maxim Oreshkin, in an interview with Vedomosti this week, said he was surprised at Rosstat's first assessment of Russia's GDP growth, and urged not to draw "global positive conclusions" from this. The forecast of the Ministry of Economic Development for 2018 is an increase of 1.8%, in 2019 the ministry expects a slowdown in GDP growth to 1.3%.

The leadership of Rosstat changed at the end of last year. In place of the long-term head of the department, professional statistician Alexander Surinov, Pavel Malkov, the ex-director of the department of public administration of the Ministry of Economic Development, came. Among the tasks of Malkov, Oreshkin named the independence of statistics and improving its quality.

Sergei Smirnov