Report: Official says Russian govt expected more damage from crisis

MOSCOW, Mar 30 (PRIME) -- The Russian government had expected the crisis to inflict more damage to the country’s economy, but everything is going smoothly, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said in an interview to Rossiya 1 TV channel on March 28.

“Things are not so bad. Our expectations as of the end of 2014 about how we were going to survive in the first half of 2015 were tougher. We expected more damage. And the satiation that we are dealing with now is not developing in the way that we’d expected and it is good,” Shuvalov said.

He said that he agrees with specialists who say that the Russian economy will start growing from 2016.

The Finance Ministry does not rule out that Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by 2-2.5% in 2016-2017, while the Economic Development Ministry’s forecast says that the economy will grow 2.8% in 2016 and maintain a similar trend in the next three years.

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