Is it to wait for unrest in Russia due to food prices, US sanctions are already close and Alexander Voloshin in Bell Club

The Ministry of Economics and Peskov were outraged by Bloomberg about the threat of unrest in Russia due to growth in food prices. We analyze who is right

Last Sunday, on February 28, Bloomberg included Russia in the top-five “hot spots”, where rising prices for products “causes special anxiety” and can provoke dissatisfaction of the population. The authorities immediately rushed to refute this: they say, with rising prices in Russia, no worse than in the rest of the world, and the conclusions of the agency are “speculative”, representatives of the government and the Kremlin said. We studied the arguments of both parties and with the help of economists and sociologists we allow the dispute.

Bloomberg: Against the backdrop of a pandemic, world food prices have reached a maximum in six years. Due to the surge of demand from China, failures in supplies and bad weather, all products from soy to palm oil rose. In rich countries, customers in the worst case will have to choose other brands. In the poorest - decide whether to send a child to work instead of a school. But the maximum resonance should be expected in medium -sized countries: India, Brazil, Turkey, Nigeria and Russia. The Russians also remember the “history lessons” obtained in the 90s in stores with empty regiments, and prices can cause dissatisfaction in society, especially against the backdrop of a general decrease in the popularity of Vladimir Putin and recent protests. Artificial restrictions like quotas for export of grain and fixed sugar prices, sunflower oil and other demanded products can push inflation.

Russian authorities. Analytics Bloomberg is “speculative”, the Ministry of Economic Development said . The Ministry, together with Rosstat and the Federal Tax Service (Federal Tax Service), closely monitor prices. Dmitry Peskov said that they did not agree with the publication in the Kremlin and believe “other data”. According to Peskov, income fell in all countries of the world, and in Russia the situation is no worse than abroad.

How actually?

Did prices really grow in Russia? Yes. According to Rosstat, in 2020, food prices rose by 6.7% - against 2.6% a year earlier. Prices for fruit and vegetable products jumped by 17.4%-and in 2019 decreased by 2%.

• Prices are rising around the world, but in Russia - faster than the average -level level and faster than in developed and first developing countries, says Georgy Ostapkovich, director of the Center for Conjunctioning Studies of the Higher Superior. Among other things, Russia in 2020 increased exports at once in several positions - for example, for sugar. Because of this, world prices began to influence the internal ones more strongly, says Stanislav Murashov, chief economist of Raiffeisenbank.
• But even otherwise equal, the Russians would have felt a increase in prices more than citizens of wealthy countries. The consumer basket is more shifted in our products than in Europe and the United States, explains Anton Tabah’s main economist of Ra Ra. For most Russians, food expenses make up more than 40% of the family budget, the professor of Chicago University Konstantin Sonin wrote .
• The Kremlin talk about the opposite, but in fact the real disposable incomes of the population in Russia in 2020 fell stronger than in many countries - by 3.5%. In the eurozone, they grew by 1.6%, in the EU as a whole - by 1.5%, it follows from the Eurostat data . The share of people who consider themselves financially affected by Covid in Russia doubled and exceeded the global one in Russia.
• At the same time, unlike many developed countries, in Russia there are no mechanisms for supporting food costs - for example, distributions, coupons and coupons for food, adds toabas.

The authorities decided to regulate prices. Will it help?

Rather, not. Each crisis of the authorities try to stop the increase in products for products using administrative tools. At the end of 2007 - early 2008, the government agreed with manufacturers and retail on freezing of milk, butter, bread and eggs. And in 2015, the authorities stagged the right to directively limit prices for 90 days if, within 30 days, socially significant products (for example, meat, sugar, cereals) rise in price by 30% or more. But both times these experiments ended with a reduction in production and a sharp increase in “frozen” prices after “defrosting”.

But at the end of 2020, the government took up the limitation of oil and sugar prices. As the rector of the Russian Economic School (RASH) Ruben Enicolopes explained , this is a “gesture of some despair”: the country continues in the country, and the authorities have no effective measures. The world experience of such regulation shows: manufacturers will lose profitability and begin to leave the market, said Ostapkovich from the Higher School. A year later, a deficit will begin, you will have to return to the prices of today, but it will even be more difficult to keep them.

Now Ostapkovich adds: administrative regulation is dangerous in that the short -term (no more than three months) lowering the price of one product will become a dangerous precedent for business. He will not be reasonable to think that this measure can be applied in any situation - and act accordingly.

Maybe there are no other ways to reduce prices?

Some definitely eat.

• A simple and obvious option is to cancel grocery counter -sanctions, says Evgeny Praorshin, the chief economist of PF Capital and writes Sonin. Praorshin calls the grocery embargo among the main reasons for the growth of products for products. “Along with Hamon, for example, Polish apples and other cheap and high -quality products that the population bought,” he explains.
• Rapid -acting means can become grocery coupons, says Tabakh from the expert RA. This is not a marginal idea: in the USA, for example, about 42 million people - 12% of the population receive the so -called Food Stamps, the economist says.
• There is only one effective, albeit slow option, globally: to encourage competition and create a normal business climate, says Ostapkovich from the Center for Continuing Studies HSE: “If there are not five refineries in the country, but 25, gas prices will naturally regulate and decline.”

Will the increase in prices for social discontent?

It is unlikely. Most economists called Bloomberg an estimate of excessively dramatic, and the increase in food prices in Russia expected and uncritical. The expectations of people are on a negative level, but the population does not have panic moods, Ostapkovich from HSE is sure. The country would have become a “hot point” if the ruble exchange rate had much flew. Now this is not, ”adds Murashov from Raiffeisenbank.

Although the problem of price growth is always called among the most popular among the population, right now it is not so acute, says the deputy director of the Levada Center Denis Volkov. According to the center’s surveys, now it is considered the main problem of less than 60% of the population. Over the past year, this number has increased slightly. But, for comparison, at the beginning of 2015, when the ruble collapsed and prices grew every day, the share of such respondents was more than 80%. Only in the long run, the dissatisfaction of the population by the rise in price of products leads to an increase in tension, increasing the critical attitude to power and the fall of ratings, says the sociologist.

Bell.club

With Alexander Voloshin

After a long break, Bell.club returns to offline - and we ourselves are very happy. Already on March 18, at 19.00 at Cabinet Lounge, we are waiting for the club participants at a closed meeting with Alexander Voloshin, the former head of the presidential administration (1999-2003), and now - the coordinator of the expert council under the government, a member of the Board of Directors of Yandex, the head of the Board of Directors of the First Cargo Company, as well as the investor of the Russian company Genotek.

Alexander Stalievich was the very first guest of our club in October 2017. Without a record, he frankly answered the most diverse questions of the audience for more than two hours, and this, without a doubt, was one of the most interesting meetings of Bell.club. The beginning of the political cycle this year in Russia turned out to be unexpectedly complete events - so we will definitely discuss something. Waiting for you!

MONEY

With new sanctions

The sanctions of the European Union for the poisoning of Alexei Navalny allowed the Kremlin to get rid of a slight fright, and large businessmen were bypassed. Now we are waiting for the second, more threatening series - US sanctions. The administration of Joe Biden is preparing to announce its sanctions this week, CNN said today. According to the new sanctions strategy of the White House, measures will be agreed with partners from the European Union. The CNN source admits that the sanctions will be introduced by Joe Biden’s executive decree and will be a single package “For everything” - both for Navalny’s poisoning and last year’s hacker attack on the US government institutions (“Solarwind”), and for the award of the Taliban militants allegedly proposed by Russia in Afghanistan. According to one of the channel interlocutors, sanctions will affect both individuals and legal entities.

Fix Price was evaluated, IVI - preparing

The news report from the unexpectedly violently revived market of Russian IPO. Fix Price chain of former co -owners of Kopeiki, Sergei Lomakin and Artem Khachatryan, officially set the price range of its placement - $ 7.4–8.3 billion. This is lower than the upper boundaries of the very first rating (it was about the figure up to $ 11.5 billion), but the successful placement will still evaluate the Fix PRICE more than the Magnitus. (capitalization of $ 6.8 billion) and a little cheaper than X5 Retail Group, which earn 8-10 times more revenue than Fix Price. The Fix Price has already have anchor investors - the sovereign fund of QIA QIA QIA, as well as the BlackRock ($ 150 million), GIC ($ 100 million) and APG ($ 75 million). In total, the company is going to help out $ 1.7 billion.

The next on the stage may be a streaming platform IVI, whose IPO American media announced back in the fall of 2020, along with the successfully accommodated Ozon. But then the State Duma deputy Anton Gorekin stood in the way of accommodation, who introduced a bill to limit the shares of foreigners in online cinemas by analogy with the media. Now IVI is thinking about changing the management structure following the example of “Yandex”, which in 2019 after the previous bill Gorylykin delegated the solution of the most important issues about the fate of the company to a specially created fund of public interests, whose councils included the loyalty of which the state may have no doubt.

Stories

As former top managers S7 earned 1 billion rubles for smart rental of scooters

“At a time when Moscow is in traffic jams for hours, when we are constantly late somewhere and the idea of ​​environmentally friendly transport sounds louder, the shering of electric scooters seemed to be a plague topic.” The Vice President S7 for 15 years built a career at the airline, and then decided to bring kikshering to Russia-renting scooters using the application. He infected his colleagues with this idea - and now their project, Whoosh, earns 1 billion rubles a year. We tell how the service was launched, what its creators see the advantage over competitors and how the company attracts investment.

PRACTICE

How companies in the USA are preparing for the second year of remotes

If your company is going to stay on the remote one in the foreseeable future or leave a significant part of the employees on it, you should read the selection of WSJ, who talked with large American companies about how they are equipped in the second year of remotes. For Silicon Valley, the main question (hardly relevant for Russia) is to reduce salaries to employees who moved to cheaper states. Facebook was even going to track the location of his employees through the corporate VPN, but refused these plans and now asks them to be recognized as honestly, and to review the salaries selectively. The STRIPE payment service approached the issue of flexible-it offers San Francisco, New York or Seattle, a one-time bonus of $ 20,000 in exchange for reducing salaries by 10%. Some planned for employees pleasant bonuses - for example, cash vouchers for vaccination that can be spent on training programs for children or sports (Palo Alto Network), or surcharges up to $ 100 per day for employees with children (Bank of america).

Business in graphomaniacs

A typical commentary on the well -told story today - “this must be sold Netflix”. In real life, this is not so simple, but possible. QUARTZ talks about how WattPad built on a stream of scripts and stories of people who want to “sell this Netflix”, a business worth $ 600 million-so many Naver Korean Internet holding paid for Wattpad. The WattPad founded in 2006, 90 million users who fill the content of different quality on the platform, and the company selects the standing stories using artificial intelligence of its own development. Based on the content from Wattpad Netflix, it shoots a series of Romkoma “Kiss Broke”, and the competing streaming service Hulu is the series “Light, like a feather”.