MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/. President of Russia’s Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin considers it too early to speak of the country’s full economic recovery amid a substantial drop in investment.
"It is not right to say that we (Russia) have overcome stagnation. Indeed, this year will see GDP growth, while industrial production demonstrated a 1% increase last year compared with 2015. However, investment in fixed capital have been seriously falling since last year," said in an interview aired by NTV channel.
According to Shokhin, the economic policy requires drastic changes aimed at reaching growth rates above the average global level in 2019-2020. "The global economic growth rates are not very high, projections are gloomy, but nevertheless (the global growth) amounts to around 3-3.5%. In order to have higher growth rates we have to ensure at least 3.5% per year," he added.
According to the Economic Development Ministry’s official outlook for 2017, Russia’s GDP growth will be 0.6%. However, Economic Development Minister said earlier that GDP growth would exceed 2% in the second half of this year, meaning that 1H 2017 GDP growth will be above 1%. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia’s GDP growth may be around 1-1.2% this year.