Booming imports threaten Russian growth
Russia in Q2 increased imports with 33 percent year-on-year. That might eventually threaten the revival of Russian industry.
While experts believed the Russian economy would grow stably all through 2010, new figures now show that prospects might not be that bright after all. One of the reasons is the quick increase in Russian imports.
In the second quarter of the year, imports increased as much as 33 percent compared with the same period last year. The lion’s share of the import increase comes from former Soviet republics, newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes in an editorial.
With a continuation of the import level, Russian enterprises will soon have limited possibilities for growth, the newspaper concludes.
The concern is shared by Deputy Minister of Economic Development Andrei Klepach. He admits that the import level is one of the factors which could prevent the Russian industry from growing dynamically.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta believes the high import indicates that the anti-crisis measures of the government might not be working as planned, and that a major part of the anti-crisis money actually ends up abroad.
