The measures taken by the Ministry of Economic Development to bolster Russia’s economic growth will not bring results overnight and may take some time, as the ongoing processes have “a lot of inertia”, the country’s minister of economic development Maxim Oreshkin said in an interview with state-run news agency TASS.
“Let me remind you that last year, economic growth amounted to more than 2%. Prior to that, in 2017, it was 1.8%. It is clear that this is not much,” Oreshkin said.
“I’m ready to answer for the period that I spent in the Ministry of Economic Development, though I’ve been at the helm as Minister, for a short while. This time coincided with the global crisis, sanctions pressure. Many of the processes that we are now ‘rebooting’ have a lot of inertia. It is difficult to see the outcome right away, even more so for millions of our citizens, for them to feel the real effects,” the Minister added.
According to the Russian State Statistics Service (Rosstat), in 2018 the growth of the Russian economy was 2.3%, in 2017 – 1.6%. Based on the forecast of the Ministry of Economic Development, in 2019 the country’s GDP will increase by 1.3%.
In the interview, Oreshkin acknowledged that corruption is the main reason for the slow growth of Russia’s economy, but said that the government is doing its best to curb the corruptive trends.
“The fight against corruption is on. I see in the government a lot of honest, open people who have declared war on this evil,” the minister said.
