MOSCOW, January 15 (Itar-Tass) - Russia has a high inflation and slow economic growth, according to the country’s top economic officials.
“Regarding a whole range of developing countries, including Russia, we can speak about such a problem as stagflation, that is a rapid deceleration of economic growth accompanied by a spurt in inflation,” Kseniya Yudayeva, a deputy head of Russia’s Central Bank, said Wednesday.
Yudayeva, who was speaking at the Gaidar Forum, one of the country’s major economic conferences, said the tendency could also be observed in India, Brazil and a number of other countries.
“This is one of last year’s challenges that we need to assess and build an economic policy strategy on its basis,” she said.
Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev agrees.
“The term is not so important. Let’s assume I agree. A combination of growing inflation and low economic growth may be defined as stagflation,” he said.
Ulyukayev said in late December that the 2013 inflation in Russia would total 6.4-6.5 percent.
The Gaidar Forum, which this year is being held on January 15-18, is one of the major annual international scientific economic conferences in Russia. The forum was established in 2010 in memory of Yegor Gaidar, a leading Russian economist and architect of Russia’s reforms of the early 1990s.
The 2014 forum is dedicated to sustainable development. Entitled Russia and the World: Sustainable Development, the event is focusing on such top priority issues as economic growth in the context of global transformations, its potential and effective management and risks associated with innovative entrepreneurship and resource-based economies.