YOSHKAR-OLA, August, 24. /TASS/. Russians’ real income won’t grow rapidly in the near future, senior managing director and chief analyst of Russia’s top lender Sberbank Mikhail Matovnikov said on Wednesday.

He was speaking at the Time of Opportunities economic forum in Yoshkar-Ola, the capital city of Russia’s Mari El Republic. 

"In the near future, there is no reason to believe that real income of the population will grow significantly. The population’s real income boom that was seen in the pre-crisis period, between 2009 and 2014, was financed by high oil prices and a sharp increase in social contributions, salaries to public sector employees and so on," he said.

According to the analyst, that boom created equality in the labor market, which will not happen again. "It will take us too long to return to the level of 2014," he said.

According to the Federal State Statistics Service, in 2013 the level of the population’s real disposable income rose by 4% compared to 2012. Since then, it has been steadily declining. For instance, in 2014 it scaled back by 0.7% (to the level of the previous year), in 2015 it dropped by 3.2%, and in 2016 that figure slid by 5.9%.

The Time of Opportunities Economic Forum was held in Yoshkar-Ola on August 23, and was attended by more than 300 top corporate managers, entrepreneurs and scientists.

The business part of the forum included seven discussion platforms to discuss reforming the regulatory and supervisory agencies, cultivating domestic tourism, highlighting the uniqueness of the Mari El republic and that region’s most investment-attractive sectors.