What happened in Russian economy in 2018?

Russian economy has finally stabilized in 2018, but it was never able to achieve substantial growth, Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Market, Dmitry Piskulov, chairman of the Board of the National Currency Association, and Professor of the Stock Market Department of the HSE Alexander Abramov told Vestnik Kavkaza, summing up results of 2018.

First of all, Anatoly Aksakov, spoke about several factors: “The most important thing is stability. Stability, strength and consistency are three characteristics that indicate that Russia has economically returned to self-sufficient and self-developing regime. No external factors could shake stability of the Russian economy.

"At the same time, the biggest problem is low economic growth. Life shows that Russia has potential to ensure substantial economic growth, but it depends on policy that executive branch will pursue," he noted.

Dmitry Piskulov also spoke about weakness of economic growth in 2018. "Overall, this year was remembered by the fact that our president set task to create new economic model, create innovations and use international experience in order to produce more competitive products. In addition, the US and EU economic sanctions against us still exist. However, Russian economy copes well with these external shocks, despite capital outflow."

Alexander Abramov noted significance the current budget policy. "This is our main instrument, it adapts to current conditions of sanctions and volatility of prices of export goods. However, overall results are more pessimistic: it's not possible to achieve noticeable economic growth, real incomes of the population are falling. While the state’s response to these issue is pretty great, situation is still difficult. Unfortunately, private sector is still held back by a number of factors," he believes.