MOSCOW, August 2. /TASS/. Together with huge oil and gas export potential the Russian economy has high non-oil and gas export potential, experts polled by TASS believe. Exports of food, information technologies and creative products are among such growth drivers.

Speaking at the headquarters of the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) last week, US President Joe Biden recalled the Geneva summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and stated that the Russian economy is based exclusively on nuclear weapons and oil resources.

First Deputy Head of the Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation Gleb Pokatovich considers the decline in the Russian budget’s revenues from resources export a trend. "The decline in the share of oil and gas revenues in the federal budget may continue, though not compared to 2020 when it reached the lowest level ever, but more likely as a trend. Looking at the past decade, in 2011-2015 the share of oil and gas revenues amounted to an average of 48.8%, whereas in 2016-2020 it stood at 37.8%, in 2021-2023 it will probably go down to 32-33%," he said.

"The decline in the share of oil and mineral revenues in the budget is a general trend in the long-term prospective. With growth of other non-resource sectors particularly from resources exports the share in the budget will be decreasing. This is definitely inevitable in the long-term prospective," Director of the Centre for Science and Technology Foresight at the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge of the Russian Higher School of Economics Alexander Chulok agrees.

Promising export

The issue of food safety is coming to the fore as a result of the pandemic, which is why the agriculture complex might become one of growth drivers with high export potential for the Russian economy, Chulok suggests. However, it is important to make sure that exported goods should have a high transformation rate. "The first growth driver is the use of capacities in agriculture, including resource and export, though with transition to technological modernization, meaning considering technologies that do not depend on climate, advanced-processing technologies. It is very important here not to repeat the mistake with oil. We need a technological upgrade, using the existing resource export areas," he explained.

The expert considers the information technologies sector, as well as products of creative industries, another promising non-resource export area. "The second area (also non-resource) is connected with our successes in IT, in information technologies, in the work with client experience, in big data processing. We have a good groundwork here largely due to the fact that we have decent math schools, computer programming schools, everything concerning creativity. In the future creative sectors of the economy may become one of the most intensive in terms of added value. And in this respect the situation with creativity is quite good here. Creativity, ingenuity, the skill to find non-standard approaches, this might be a very good growth driver as well," he said.

Apart from mining sectors and agriculture, the areas of creating new materials, new transport types, information technologies and a number of other fields may become new growth drivers, according to Pokatovich. "Speaking about new growth driers, the issue may be about the technologies of creating new materials, various projects in the area of AI, robotics technology, autonomous driving and hydrogen transport," he said.