Russian growth halted
The Russian economy in August shrank compared with the previous month. The country is likely to experience far lower growth in 2010 than predicted by government, experts say.
Preliminary figures for August this year show that both industry and the service sector experienced decline compared with the previous month. Industrial output was on its lowest level in three months, newspaper Vedomosti reports.
The negative figures come after weak results also in July. Then, GDP shrunk 0,3 percent compared with June.
Optimists earlier predicted a Russian growth of up to seven percent in 2010. However, even the Ministry of Economic Development’s growth estimate of four percent might now be too optimistic. Analyst Vladimir Tikhomirov from the “Otkrytiye” company now says to Vedomosti that the Russian growth in 2010 will hardly be more than three percent.
In the first half of the year, the economy grew 4,2 percent year-on-year. That was after catastrophically bad results in 2009.
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The stagnating results are also reflected in Russian regional economies. As illustrated in the latest Barents Monitoring report for Murmansk Oblast, the region even in the first half of the year proved unable to return to pre-crisis levels. Most of the indicators were negative, only the mining industry showed stable growth, the report reads.
Despite the development, Russian Prime Minister Putin is confident that Russia is about the overcome the crisis. In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda last week, the premier underlined that Russia “in the very near future will have overcome the crisis”.
