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Analytical review
The past year appeared to be economically successful for Russia allowing it to substantially improve its positions on the global economic arena. In 2003 GDP rose by 7% to Rb13.018tn or $424.4bn. GDP totaled $3.0K per capita at the current exchange rate being an all-time high for the period from 1991.
About the half of GDP growth in 2003 is attributed to the increasing consumer demand being the key driver of the economical growth.
The rise of personal income propelled the final consumption growth; companies and organizations kept increasing employment costs. Highly developed crediting system shored the rise of consumer demand up as well.
The economy will continue to move at a quick pace, as the key economical drivers that had positive impact on the development of the Russian economy are not expected to change fundamentally in 2004. The cheerful sentiment is based on the growth of investment inflow into the economy in last six months of 2003. The increase in investment contributes to the further economical growth. In 2003 investments into fixed assets rose by 12.2%. This year we expect GDP will reach Rb15.1trilions. In dollars GDP will constitute $530bn or $3.7K per capita.
Over the last four years relief of the economy from external factors is the major achievement of the Russian economy. External public debt dropped and the overall rise of import-export operations over the last several years appeared less than GDP rise. Hence, we estimate that the volume of exports against GDP will dip from 36.9% in 2001 to 30% in 2004 and the volume of imports against GDP will fall from 20.6% to 19.1%.
Together with the rise of exchange ruble rate gold and hard currency reserves accumulated due to both currency earnings and inflow of foreign capital had a sizeable surge in 2003. The uptrend of gold and hard currency reserves is expected to continue for 2004 and their volume is likely to exceed $100bn by the end of the year and even might reach $115-120bn.
The low level of monetization determined by M2/GDP ratio remains the key disadvantage of the Russian economy. In 2003 the nominal monetization rose by one third from Rb2.12trillions to Rb2.82trillions. Taking into account consumer price index money supply gains constituted 18.8%. |
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