Since 1991, World Economy has Risen by 2500 Percent while the Russian One Only 30 Percent, Nikolayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 15 – Data from the IMF and World Bank show that over the last 31 years, the economy of the world has grown by approximately 2500 percent, the Chinese economy alone by 14,500 percent, but the economy of Russia by only 30 percent, Igor Nikolayev of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences says.

            Russia’s lag reflects, he says,  not only the shocks of making the transition to a market economy in the early 1990s but also the government’s failure to make good use of the several trillion US dollars it earned from the sale of petrochemicals when prices for those were at their highest (mk.ru/economics/2023/01/15/kak-daleko-ushla-ekonomika-rossii-ot-sssr.html).

            The latter failure is perhaps the more significant, Nikolayev says, because the shift to a market economy put Russia in a far better position to respond to the sanctions that have been imposed on the country. “The market economy, however much it is denounced, is capable of adapting to changing circumstances and resist negative shocks of the kind we see now.”