Great Britain’s exit from the European Union will have almost no impact on the Russian economy, the Minister of Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin said on Sunday, according to TASS.
“I don’t think this topic is worth serious discussion because it will be minimal in terms of its impacts on the Russian economy,” he said in an interview with the Ekhov Moskvy radio station.
He did not rule out political impacts of Brexit but in terms of economy its impacts would be less than a hundredth of a percent.
According to the Russian minister, if economic contacts are severed after Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, it will hit severely the entire world. “This is a channel of influence on us rather than any direct channel,” he said, adding that Russia needs a strong EU economy to make its economy also strong.
Oreshkin also spoke about the “bubble” that creates debt overload in the Russian economy. By 2021, this problem “will explode in any case,” he said in the interview.
The problem in the Russian economy is the growing debt of the population, according to the calculations of the Ministry of Economic Development, “will explode anyway” in 2021.
The ministry is already preparing proposals that will help citizens “in a difficult situation” after the moment of the “explosion” comes, Oreshkin said. “It just will not work to approach the problem as a painless one. Let’s not increase the problem in size, do not push it there. Because our estimates indicate that in 2021 it will explode in any case,” the minister said.