Moscow Counting on Growth of Urban Agglomerations to Compensate for Falling Income from Oil and Gas, Sergeyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 21 – The projected decline in revenue from the sale of oil and gas is prompting the Russian government to look elsewhere for future economic growth. Among the places it has the greatest hopes for are Russia’s 22 urban agglomerations, where productivity is higher than for Russia as a whole, Mikhail Sergeyev says.

            The head of the economics section of Nezavisimaya gazeta says that “the chances for the revival of the economy are now connected not with oil and gas but with the growth of major urban agglomerations” whose continued growth can help boost the economy and fill the government’s coffers (ng.ru/economics/2023-06-21/1_8753_center.html).

            At present, there are some 22 urban agglomerations with populations of more than a million each. Moscow and St. Petersburg form roughly half of the 40 percent of the Russian population that these 22 do as a whole, and the central government wants to see an increase in all of them and the development of new ones.

            To ensure this growth, Moscow is promoting a variety of infrastructure projects that will allow people to live further from the center of these agglomerations. Not surprisingly, Sergeyev reports, such possibilities have sparked a major lobbying effort by leaders of the cities and by the heads of other urban center who hope to get in on this new money.