WASHINGTON, April 7. /TASS/. The Russian economic growth will substantially exceed its pre-crisis growth rates this and next year, according to projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Executive Director for Russia in the IMF, Dean of its Executive Board Aleksei Mozhin said in an interview with TASS.
Russia’s economic contraction amounted to 3.1% last year, whereas at the very beginning of the coronavirus pandemic the Fund’s experts projected a 5.5% growth contraction for the country. The outlook on Russia’s economic growth was repeatedly upgraded during the year.
"Russia will substantially surpass the pre-crisis growth rates speaking about 2021 and 2022. This is connected with the fact that in the pre-crisis period Russia's economic growth was slow. Growth rates will accelerate now, particularly due to the fact that there will be a rebound after a downturn in the Russian economy. As usually happens in the periods of economic recession, large volumes of production facilities turned out unemployed, an unemployed growth potential has formed," Mozhin said.
According to a report on the prospects of global economic development released on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund projects GDP growth in Russia at 3.8% for 2021 and 2022.
Dean of the IMF Executive Board noted that the organization believes Moscow met the pandemic-related economic crisis "from a position of strength". "Russia met the crisis from a position of strength," he said, adding that it "played a decisive role in the fact that we managed to pass the crisis with minimum losses." The Russian economy was "a cut above many others, including large development countries," Mozhin emphasized.