Minister: Russia to return to sustainable economic growth in 2022

MOSCOW, Jun 30 (PRIME) – Under the Russian recovery plan, the economy will return to sustainable growth in 2022 when the gross domestic product (GDP) rises by 3%, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov told Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin late on Monday.

“Under the nation-wide plan, we will return to the average annual GDP level of 2019 in the fourth quarter of 2021 thus fulfilling the goal of economic recovery … From 2022, we return to sustainable economic growth, we will have the figures of around 3% -- though fluctuations are still possible there, this is only a forecast now -- due to implementation of the package included in the nation-wide plan,” he said.

The government submitted the plan to President Vladimir Putin on June 19.

EMPLOYMENT LOANS, SUPPORT

Russian banks approved 2%-loans for companies under the government’s employment support program totaling 289 billion rubles, Reshetnikov said.

“It is worth saying that banks have approved 289 billion rubles of loans, supporting more than 3 million jobs. The program is being actively implemented, we see that the figures and limits that we’ve set will be popular among the entrepreneurs. This is an important element of employment stabilization not only for now, but for the entirety of 2020 and the beginning of 2021,” he said.

He added that the government earlier expanded the limit under the program by 116 billion rubles to 468 billion rubles.

Banks also issued 88 billion rubles of free loans under another state employment support program to support 930,000 jobs, he said.

Almost one million small and medium-sized enterprises have received direct payments from the state amounting to one minimum monthly wage per employee, or to 12,130 rubles, which supported more than 3.5 million jobs.

“Grants to the small and medium-sized enterprises became an important direction of support in May–June this year. We supported more than 3.5 million jobs this way in May. … Almost one million small and medium-sized companies received these grants, and statistics for June shows that the Federal Tax Service will transfer at least this amount to the employers,” he said.

STRUCTURE OF UNEMPLOYMENT

Labor and Social Protection Minister Anton Kotyakov said that about 25% of all unemployed  Russians have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Of all people registered with unemployment services, 47% have been unemployed for a long time or have never worked at all, 33% lost jobs before the pandemic, and 25% have lost jobs during the pandemic,” he said.

Analysis of existing job offerings shows that the producing sector of the economy has the largest amount of job openings, as there are 406,000 jobs listed by the sector on the federal website, while the amount of jobseekers in the industry stands at 140,000 people. The second biggest sector by job openings is the construction industry with 150,000 job openings and 120,000 jobseekers, while the healthcare sector is in the third place with 110,000 jobs and 99,000 jobseekers, he said.

Reshetnikov also said that Russia’s unemployment should return to the level of 2019 in 2021.

“Our ‘0% payroll fund’ and ‘2% payroll fund’ (employment support programs through loans) are in force … until March 1, 2021. This is important. We expect it to stabilize employment,” he said, adding that the economic recovery plan has a lot of measures to improve the labor market like re-training of unemployed people.

“Judging by the entire package of measures, I think that we will fulfill the task set by the president and that we will return in 2021 to the employment level that we had in 2019,” Reshetnikov said.

(69.9513 rubles – U.S. $1)

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