Since 2013, the Russian Economy has Barely Grown and Russians have Become Poorer, Statistics Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 10 – In Soviet times, officials loved to compare wherever the country was economically with 1913, the last year of normalcy before war and revolution changed everything. Now, Russians look back to 2013, the last normal year before the Crimean Anschluss and Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine.

            But when they do, they see not the growth figures Soviet officials celebrated but rather a decade of stagnation in which the Russian economy showed little growth and in which the Russian people became poorer, according to a survey of available data by the Important Stories portal (istories.media/opinions/2024/04/10/novii-zastoi-kak-rossiya-prospala-desyat-let/).

            Among the figures the portal offers are the following:

·       Since 2013, the Russian GDP has grown 11.5 percent or 1.1 percent a year; over the same period, the world economy has grown 2.7 percent a year.

·       Real disposable incomes of the population have fallen and are now lower than in 2013.

·       Prices have doubled since 2013, with inflation averaging 7.15 percent a year.

·       The US dollar now costs 2.7 time as much in rubles as it did a decade ago.

·       Expressed in dollar terms, the incomes of Russians have fallen ever further behind those of most other countries in the industrial world.

·       The government’s share in the economy has risen slightly and that of the population has fallen.

·       Government earnings from oil and gas now constitute 30 percent of the budget, down from 50 percent a decade ago.

·       There are no immediate prospects that Russia will rise into the top ranks of the world’s economies, but there are also none that it will fall below the middle rank either.